To bolt , i.e. figuratively, to flee suddenly
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בָּרַח (bāraḥ) means to flee, to bolt, to escape with sudden urgency. The word carries the physical sense of rapid, desperate movement away from danger — but its theological weight in the Hebrew Bible comes from what and whom people flee, and whether the flight is wise or tragic.
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Full entry for בָּרַח (H1272) · Open the biblical lexicon
בָּרַח (bāraḥ) means to flee, to bolt, to escape with sudden urgency. The word carries the physical sense of rapid, desperate movement away from danger — but its theological weight in the Hebrew Bible comes from what and whom people flee, and whether the flight is wise or tragic.
The BSB source-word alignment has 65 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include fled (9), had fled (7), when he fled (3), . . . (2), Flee (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 16:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (9), 1 Samuel (8), 1 Kings (6), 2 Samuel (6).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
בָּרַח (bāraḥ) means to flee, to bolt, to escape with sudden urgency. The word carries the physical sense of rapid, desperate movement away from danger — but its theological weight in the Hebrew Bible comes from what and whom people flee, and whether the flight is wise or tragic. Jacob flees from Esau and from Laban. Moses flees from Pharaoh. Elijah flees from Jezebel.
Jonah flees from the Lord. In these narratives, the flight reveals the inner condition of the one fleeing: fear, shame, exhaustion, or — in Jonah's case — deliberate rebellion against a divine commission. The bāraḥ of Jonah 1:3 is an especially theologically charged flight in the OT: 'Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence (pānîm) of the Lord.' The phrase 'from the presence of the Lord' echoes Genesis 4:16, where Cain went out from the presence of the Lord after the murder — the language marks Jonah's flight as a kind of exile, a covenantal turning-away.
And yet the narrative that follows exposes the impossibility of the flight: Yahweh pursues, hurls a great wind, controls the sea, appoints the fish. The bāraḥ from God's presence is revealed as a theological fiction — there is nowhere to flee from the God who made the sea and the dry land (Ps 139:7-10). The pastoral dividend of bāraḥ is this: the same God who cannot be fled is also the God who pursues the fleeing prophet with grace rather than destruction, who restores commission rather than abandoning the fugitive.
Jonah's bāraḥ ends not with condemnation but with a second word: 'Arise, go to Nineveh' (Jon 3:2).
The local OT index currently counts about 65 uses of בָּרַח. It describes both legitimate and illegitimate flight: servants fleeing masters, soldiers fleeing battle, individuals fleeing threats. The most theologically significant uses cluster around the patriarchs (Jacob fleeing Esau/Laban), the prophets (Moses, Elijah, Jonah), and the Psalms' meditations on the impossibility of fleeing from God.
But Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh (the Lord). He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid its fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh (the Lord).
The double 'from the presence of the Lord' frames Jonah's flight as a theological statement, not merely a physical journey. He is not merely avoiding Nineveh; he is attempting to vacate the divine commission altogether. The repetition (once at departure, once at embarkation) shows the narrator's deliberate irony: Jonah thinks the ticket to Tarshish purchases distance from God, but the God who commissioned him is the God who owns the sea he sails.
There Jacob built an altar, and he called that place El-bethel, because it was there that God had revealed Himself to Jacob as he fled from his brother.
Jacob's bāraḥ from Esau became the occasion for the Bethel theophany — the God whom Jacob fled toward (unknowingly) met him on the road. The altar built at the place of flight-and-encounter becomes a witness that God was present in the flight. The same pattern appears in Jonah: what looks like successful escape becomes the occasion of divine pursuit and re-encounter.
And Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there,
Elijah's bāraḥ after Jezebel's threat — the greatest prophet of his generation fleeing in exhaustion and fear. The flight ends not in condemnation but with an angel providing food and the word 'the journey is too great for you.' Divine compassion meets the bāraḥ of the exhausted servant. God does not berate Elijah for running; he feeds him and sends him on a new commission at Horeb.
Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?
The Psalm that directly addresses the theology of bāraḥ from God: the rhetorical question whose answer is 'nowhere.' Heaven, Sheol, the uttermost sea — none of these exceeds God's presence or his hand. The Psalm does not read this as threat alone but as comfort: the God from whom one cannot flee is the God whose hand leads and whose right hand holds. Jonah's bāraḥ is the narrative enactment of what Psalm 139 declares impossible.
When Pharaoh heard about this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, where he sat down beside a well.
Moses' bāraḥ from Egypt is the necessary prelude to the burning bush — the flight into the wilderness becomes the preparation for the commission. The same pattern as Jonah and Elijah: bāraḥ is not the end of the story but the condition under which the God of the commission re-appears. The well where Moses sits after flight becomes the place of meeting and call.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Sudden flight marked by urgency and loss of control; escape from threat or pursuit rather than deliberate departure
Sudden flight marked by urgency and loss of control; escape from threat or pursuit rather than deliberate departure
to bolt, i.e. figuratively, to flee suddenly BDB: go through Usage: chase (away); drive away, fain, flee (away), put to flight, make haste, reach, run away, shoot.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 4 selected witnesses from 65 lexical occurrence verses.
בָּרַח is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Jonah's bāraḥ invites the preacher to ask what flight from God actually looks like in pastoral experience. It rarely looks like outright rejection of faith. More often it looks like purchasing a ticket in the other direction: saying yes to available distractions, choosing the path of least resistance over the harder commission, keeping busy enough that the divine summons cannot be heard.
The narrative of Jonah 1 is darkly comic in its portrayal of how elaborate the flight apparatus can become — a fare paid, a ship boarded, a descent below deck into sleep — and how ineffective it turns out to be. The homiletical point is not that God catches the fleeing prophet in order to punish him, but that the commission stands. The second word to Jonah in 3:1 is identical to the first in 1:1: 'Arise, go to Nineveh.'
The bāraḥ accomplished nothing except the education of the prophet in the breadth of divine mercy — a mercy that, crucially, extended to the fleeing prophet himself before it extended to Nineveh.
Jon.1.3
The root bāraḥ is related to bāriaḥ (a bolt or bar — the thing that makes flight possible by securing a door). The image is of rapid, bolting movement, often combined with fear or urgency. In Jonah 1:3, the verb is paired with the repeated phrase 'from the presence (pānîm) of the Lord' — the same language used when Cain went out 'from the presence of the Lord' after the murder (Gen 4:16).
The repetition in Jonah 1:3 (at the start and end of the verse) is literary emphasis: the narrator wants the reader to see clearly what the destination actually is. Going to Tarshish is incidental; fleeing from the pānîm of YHWH is the defining act.
The NT does not use a single word that translates bāraḥ, but the theology of flight-from-God's-commission appears in the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30), where the one-talent servant's burial of the gift is a form of bāraḥ — withdrawing from the commission into apparent safety. The prodigal son's departure into the far country (Luke 15:13) echoes Jonah's ticket to Tarshish: both are attempts to create distance from the father.
The father's response in the parable — running to meet the returning son — mirrors the divine pattern in Jonah: bāraḥ does not end in abandonment but in pursuit and restoration. Paul's own pre-conversion life could be read as a bāraḥ against the divine purposes being fulfilled in Christ, and his Damascus road encounter is the divine ambush that ends the flight and issues a new commission to the nations — the same commission Jonah fled.