To commit adultery (usually of the female, and less often of simple fornication, rarely of involuntary ravishment); figuratively, to commit idolatry (the Jewish people being regarded as the spouse of Jehovah)
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through the Connect page. Screenshots are helpful.
זָנָה is the OT's primary verb for sexual immorality in its broadest sense — harlotry, prostitution, fornication — and in its most theologically freighted sense: the infidelity of a people who have gone after what does not belong to them while remaining bound to the God who called them. With 93 occurrences across the OT, it is one of the most-used moral verbs in the Hebrew Bible, and its sheer frequency reflects how.
Reader summary
Full entry for זָנָה (H2181) · Open the biblical lexicon
זָנָה is the OT's primary verb for sexual immorality in its broadest sense — harlotry, prostitution, fornication — and in its most theologically freighted sense: the infidelity of a people who have gone after what does not belong to them while remaining bound to the God who called them. With 93 occurrences across the OT, it is one of the most-used moral.
The BSB source-word alignment has 94 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include . . . (5), a prostitute (3), of a prostitute (3), and prostituted themselves (2), as a prostitute (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 34:31. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (22), Hosea (14), Leviticus (9), Jeremiah (6).
זָנָה is the OT's primary verb for sexual immorality in its broadest sense — harlotry, prostitution, fornication — and in its most theologically freighted sense: the infidelity of a people who have gone after what does not belong to them while remaining bound to the God who called them. With 93 occurrences across the OT, it is one of the most-used moral verbs in the Hebrew Bible, and its sheer frequency reflects how central the covenant-faithfulness it violates is to Israel's identity.
At the literal level, זָנָה describes the woman who gives herself sexually outside the covenant of marriage. Tamar is identified as one who has זָנָה when Judah sees her veiled at the roadside (Gen 38:15). Rahab is הַזֹּנָה — the woman known for this (Josh 2:1). The Mosaic law addresses the practice directly and in some cases connects it immediately to idolatry: do not prostitute your daughter, lest the land fall into prostitution and be filled with depravity (Lev 19:29). The literal and the theological are never far apart.
But the word's theological weight far exceeds its literal referents. Beginning in Exodus (34:15-16), the verb is used for Israel going after other gods — making covenant with the inhabitants of the land and then going whoring (זָנָה) after their gods. Deuteronomy 31:16 records God's own prediction: this people will rise and go whoring (זָנָה) after foreign gods. This is not a borrowed metaphor. It is the governing image of the covenant relationship: Israel is the wife of Yahweh, bound in a marriage established at Sinai, and every turn toward other gods is precisely what this word names.
Hosea makes this explicit in the most sustained and painful way. God tells Hosea to marry a woman of harlotry because the land commits great harlotry (זָנֹה תִּזְנֶה) by forsaking the Lord (Hos 1:2). Hosea's marriage is not a metaphor for the theology — it is the theology lived in human flesh. What Israel has done to God, Hosea's wife has done to Hosea. And the God who sends Hosea back to his unfaithful wife is the God who will not let Israel go.
Exodus 34:15-16 — the first sustained theological use of זָנָה appears in the covenant renewal at Sinai. God warns against making covenants with the peoples of the land: when they prostitute themselves to their gods and invite you, you will eat of their sacrifices, and you will take their daughters for your sons, and their daughters will prostitute themselves (זָנוּ) to their gods and make your sons prostitute themselves (וְהִזְנוּ) to their gods. The verb immediately establishes the connection between literal sexual immorality and idolatry — sharing the table and bed of those who worship other gods draws Israel into the same harlotry.
Israel's covenant with God at Sinai was not described in commercial or legal terms alone. It was described in personal terms — the terms of a marriage. God chose Israel, pursued her, bound himself to her, and called her to exclusive loyalty in return. The verb זָנָה names what the violation of that exclusive loyalty looks like: going to another, giving to another what belongs to the covenant bond. When Israel went after Baal, the prophets did not call it a theological error. They called it whoredom. The word was chosen because it is the right word.
Hosea is the book that makes this most personal. God does not merely send a message through Hosea — he tells Hosea to live the message. Marry a woman of harlotry, because the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord. Hosea's marriage becomes the living parable of Israel's condition and of God's response to it. The wife who keeps going back to other men is Israel. The husband who keeps going back to the wife is God. The book is nearly unbearable to read because it refuses to let the reader stay in the comfortable register of metaphor. This is what your God has borne. This is what your faithlessness has cost. And this God is still calling her back.
Ezekiel chapters 16 and 23 extend the verb into full narrative allegory. Jerusalem is a foundling child that God found in the open field, washed, clothed, adorned, and made his own — and who then used every gift he gave her to play the whore with every nation who passed by. The allegory is relentless and deliberately excessive because Ezekiel is trying to make the people see the proportions of what they have done. God gave everything. Israel gave it to others.
For the preacher, the verb's double register is the key pastoral resource. Literal sexual immorality and spiritual infidelity to God belong to the same category in the OT because they are the same kind of act: giving to another what belongs to the covenant. The congregation that understands this is equipped to read the prophets, to read Hosea's marriage, to read Revelation's Babylon, and to ask honestly: where has our loyalty gone?
זָנָה establishes the interpretive framework that the entire prophetic tradition inherits: Israel's relationship with God is a marriage, and Israel's turn toward other gods is adultery. This is not Israel's own metaphor — it is God's, stated first in Exodus and then given its most sustained development by Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The verb carries both the literal and the theological sense without separating them, because the OT never separates them: sexual immorality and idolatry belong to the same movement of the heart, and both are named by this verb.
The LXX translates זָנָה with πορνεύω and πορνεία, which is how the prophetic charge reaches the NT. When Revelation calls Babylon the great πόρνη, the word is זָנָה in Greek dress — the same charge that Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel brought against Israel, now brought against the empire that seduces the nations away from the Lamb.
The LXX renders זָנָה and its cognates with πορνεύω, πορνεία, and πόρνη — the same Greek word family that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians and Galatians for sexual immorality, and that Revelation uses for Babylon's seduction of the nations. The canonical arc from Hosea's use of זָנָה to Revelation's use of πόρνη is a single unbroken prophetic thread about covenant unfaithfulness.
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.
Hebrew word. Metaphor of covenant betrayal: Israel's idolatry portrayed as marital unfaithfulness to Yahweh.
Metaphor of covenant betrayal: Israel's idolatry portrayed as marital unfaithfulness to Yahweh.
to commit adultery (usually of the female, and less often of simple fornication, rarely of involuntary ravishment); figuratively, to commit idolatry (the Jewish people being regarded as the spouse of Jehovah) BDB: commit fornication Usage: (cause to) commit fornication, × continually, × great, (be an, play the) harlot, (cause to be, play the) whore, (commit, fall to) whoredom, (cause to) go a-whoring, whorish.
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 1 selected witness from 93 lexical occurrence verses.
זָנָה is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Primary metaphor for covenant infidelity. Hosea 9:1-6
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
This verb opens the OT's governing image for Israel's covenant relationship with God: a marriage, with all the exclusive loyalty a marriage requires. It opens Hosea's lived parable — the most theologically concentrated use of the word in the canon — where God's bearing of Israel's unfaithfulness is shown in the life of a real man and a real woman. And it opens the canonical arc from Sinai through the prophets to Revelation, where the same charge against the same condition is brought with the same vocabulary.
It corrects the abstraction of Israel's sin in the OT — the tendency to describe it as 'idolatry' in a theological sense while missing what the prophets actually said about it. The prophets did not say Israel made poor theological choices. They said Israel played the whore. The word is chosen because it is the right word, and softening it loses what the prophets were trying to say.
It also corrects the separation of sexual ethics and spiritual faithfulness as if they were unrelated concerns. The OT does not make that separation.
Begin with the marriage image from Sinai, not from Hosea. Establish what the covenant is before introducing what its violation looks like. Then let Hosea do its work: not as an extended metaphor but as a lived reality. The man was told to marry her. He did. She left. He went back for her. The theological claim embedded in that narrative is that God has done the same for Israel, and through Israel's story, for us.
The question the sermon asks is not primarily about the congregation's sexual behavior. It is about where their loyalty is, and what it would mean to go back.
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain