To live , whether literally or figuratively; causatively, to revive
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Ḥāyāh is the Old Testament's primary verb for life itself: to live, to be alive, to remain alive, to revive from the edge of death, and causatively to keep someone alive or to give life. It covers the whole spectrum from biological existence to the restored vitality that comes when God intervenes.
Reader summary
Full entry for חָיָה (H2421) · Open the biblical lexicon
Ḥāyāh is the Old Testament's primary verb for life itself: to live, to be alive, to remain alive, to revive from the edge of death, and causatively to keep someone alive or to give life. It covers the whole spectrum from biological existence to the restored vitality that comes when God intervenes.
The BSB source-word alignment has 282 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include lived (21), was (17), live (16), will live (14), . . . (13).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 3:22. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (59), Ezekiel (48), Psalms (31), 2 Kings (22).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Ḥāyāh is the Old Testament's primary verb for life itself: to live, to be alive, to remain alive, to revive from the edge of death, and causatively to keep someone alive or to give life. It covers the whole spectrum from biological existence to the restored vitality that comes when God intervenes. In Genesis, God breathes life into the dust and man becomes a living being; in Ezekiel, God commands the dry bones and they live.
The word does not separate physical from spiritual life in the way later theological categories often do. To live before God in the Old Testament is to be in right relationship with him: the psalmist cries that God has kept his soul alive, and Deuteronomy promises that obedience to God's word is the path of life and length of days. Ḥāyāh also functions as a cry of hope: "let the king live," "may your soul live."
It is used of God preserving Noah through the flood, of Israel surviving in the wilderness, of Rahab and her household being spared. Life in these texts is always gift, always contingent, always held by God. The verb thus shapes the Old Testament's vision of salvation as fundamentally a matter of living or dying, of God holding life open against the encroachment of death.
Ḥāyāh appears across the full Hebrew canon, from creation narratives through wisdom literature and prophetic vision. Its most theologically concentrated uses appear in Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Ezekiel, where life before God is portrayed as gift sustained by covenant relationship rather than mere biological fact.
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
Though ḥāyāh appears here in its noun form (living being, ḥayyāh), the verbal root establishes the foundational claim: life is God-given, not self-generated. The ground contributes matter; God contributes the animating breath. This shapes every subsequent use of the word.
He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
The purpose clause is explicit: the wilderness hunger teaches Israel that ḥāyāh depends on God's word, not on bread. Jesus cites this directly in his temptation. The verse locates human life in obedient hearing rather than material provision alone.
Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word.
The psalmist links living (ḥāyāh) with keeping God's word. Psalm 119 uses this verb repeatedly as a petition: life is what God grants to those who walk in his statutes. Life here is not mere survival but the flourishing that comes from covenant faithfulness.
This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you will come to life.
In the valley of dry bones, God commands the dead to live. The word recalls Genesis 2 deliberately. National restoration after exile is portrayed as resurrection from death. Life is again entirely God's initiative and gift, not Israel's achievement.
Look at the proud one; his soul is not upright—but the righteous will live by faith—
Paul quotes this verse in Romans and Galatians as the scriptural anchor for justification by faith. The prophet is describing the Chaldean aggressor versus the faithful remnant. The righteous one lives — survives judgment, persists through crisis — by faithful trust in God. The verb carries both temporal and eschatological weight in this context.
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. Encompasses both physical survival and spiritual vitality; God's exclusive power to revive and restore life.
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 265 lexical occurrence verses.
חָיָה is built from this root:
Resurrection-oriented language of renewal. Hosea 6:1-3
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Ḥāyāh confronts every preacher and teacher with the foundational question the Old Testament never lets rest: who holds life? The answer across every deployment of this verb is the same. God does. Life is not a possession we secure, a trajectory we sustain, or a quality we earn. It is the gift God breathes in at creation, preserves through covenant, and restores when the bones are dry.
Preaching from this word means resisting two common distortions. The first is a purely biological reading that treats life as simply the absence of death. The second is a purely spiritual reading that evacuates the bodily concreteness the Old Testament insists on. Ḥāyāh includes both dimensions as a whole. The prophets envision restoration as bones reassembled and lungs filled, not as souls escaping bodies.
Deuteronomy envisions life before God as land cultivated, families fed, and communities ordered under his law. When teachers use this word carefully, they help listeners understand that the gospel's promise of life is larger and more concrete than a ticket to a disembodied heaven. Life in the biblical sense is creaturely existence held open by God's word, lived in responsive trust, and moving toward the restoration of all that death has taken.
The New Testament's promise of resurrection is intelligible only against this backdrop: God who said to dry bones "live" is the same God who raised Jesus, and the same God whose Spirit gives life to mortal bodies still.
Ezek.37.5
Ḥāyāh belongs to the root family ḥ-y-y/w, producing the noun ḥayyāh (living creature, Gen 1:20), ḥayyîm (life, plural in Hebrew to express the fullness of living, e. g. Gen. 2. 7), and the phrase ḥay-YHWH (as the Lord lives, a solemn oath form). The causative stem (Hiphil: heheyāh) means to keep alive, to let live, or to give life — used of God preserving Noah, of Rahab's household being spared, of Israel surviving the wilderness.
This causative dimension is theologically significant: God is not merely the source of life at creation but its ongoing sustainer and restorer.
The trajectory from ḥāyāh to the New Testament's zōē is one of the most sustained arcs in biblical theology. What the Old Testament describes as the gift God breathes in and preserves through covenant, the New Testament locates in Christ: he is the life (John 14:6), the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), the one in whom the promise of Habakkuk 2:4 finds its depth of fulfillment.
Paul's argument in Romans and Galatians builds on the insight that the righteous live by faith in the God who justifies. John's Gospel uses zōē as its dominant word for what Jesus offers — a life that death cannot ultimately hold. Ezekiel's vision of bones revived by divine breath becomes the background for Paul's claim that the same Spirit who raised Christ will give life to mortal bodies (Rom.
8. 11). The Old Testament's insistence that life belongs to God alone, and that covenant relationship is the proper context for living, is not left behind in the New Testament. It is concentrated in the person of Jesus and extended to all who are united to him by faith.
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