Violence ; by implication, wrong ; by metonymy unjust gain
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חָמָס (chamas) is the Hebrew word for violence — but it is a theological term that carries broader freight than physical force. BDB summarizes it as 'violence, wrong, malicious act' — covering the full spectrum from physical brutality to legal injustice to economic exploitation.
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Full entry for חָמָס (H2555) · Open the biblical lexicon
חָמָס (chamas) is the Hebrew word for violence — but it is a theological term that carries broader freight than physical force. BDB summarizes it as 'violence, wrong, malicious act' — covering the full spectrum from physical brutality to legal injustice to economic exploitation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 60 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include violence (16), of violence (14), because of the violence (3), with violence (3), a violent (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 6:11. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (14), Proverbs (7), Ezekiel (6), Habakkuk (6).
חָמָס (chamas) is the Hebrew word for violence — but it is a theological term that carries broader freight than physical force. BDB summarizes it as 'violence, wrong, malicious act' — covering the full spectrum from physical brutality to legal injustice to economic exploitation. In its most theologically significant use, chamas helps frame the flood narrative's moral diagnosis.
Genesis 6:11-13 gives chamas its most concentrated theological use: 'Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence (chamas)... And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence (chamas) through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.' The repetition (v. 11, 13) frames chamas as a decisive moral diagnosis: the antediluvian world is full of chamas, and this fullness is what brings the flood. Chamas is not merely interpersonal wrongdoing — it is a filling of the earth with a kind of moral poison that makes covenant-life impossible. In Genesis 6, YHWH responds to chamas-filled creation by beginning again through judgment and preservation.
Habakkuk 1:2-3 gives chamas its prophetic-complaint form: 'O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you chamas (violence)! and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and chamas are before me; strife and contention arise.' The prophet's complaint about chamas is specifically that YHWH appears not to respond to it. Habakkuk's theological crisis is the theodicy of unanswered chamas: violence is real, it is visible, it is unaddressed. YHWH's answer in 2:2-4 is the famous vision-response: 'the righteous shall live by his faithfulness (emunatho).' The response to chamas is not the elimination of violence immediately but the call to faithful waiting for YHWH's certain answer.
Psalm 11:5 gives chamas its most pointed divine disposition: 'YHWH tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence (chamas).' YHWH's soul (nafesh) hates the chamas-lover — this is the divine sane directed at a specific moral posture (see H8130 sane). The ish chamas (man of violence) is the opposite of the anav (meek) and the person of shalom.
Malachi 2:16 gives chamas its domestic form: 'for I hate divorce, says YHWH God of Israel, and covering one's garment with violence (chamas).' The pairing of chamas with divorce in Malachi 2:16 frames covenant-treachery toward a marriage partner as a form of chamas — the violence done to a covenant partner is chamas regardless of whether it involves physical force.
For the preacher, חָמָס (chamas) is the word that names what fills the world when covenant-life breaks down: the antediluvian world (Gen 6:11), the unjust society of the pre-exile prophets (Mic 6:12, Hab 1:2-3), and the domestic betrayal of Malachi 2:16 are all chamas-filled. In these representative texts, chamas is answered by judgment and by the call to faithfulness while judgment is being prepared.
חָמָס (chamas) appears 60 times. Its theological center is the antediluvian earth 'filled with chamas' (Gen 6:11-13) as the ground of the flood-judgment, and Habakkuk's prophetic complaint about unanswered chamas (Hab 1:2-3) answered by the call to faithful waiting (Hab 2:4). YHWH hates chamas (Ps 11:5) and Malachi 2:16 pairs it with covenant-treachery in marriage.
Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence.
Chamas as the ground of the flood: 'ha-aretz nishchatah lifnei ha-Elohim va-timale ha-aretz chamas (the earth was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with chamas).' The double statement (v. 11 and v. 13: 'the earth is filled with chamas through them') frames chamas not as one sin among many but as the diagnostic condition of the whole earth before the flood.
The connection of chamas to 'corrupt' (shachat — to destroy, corrupt, mar) anticipates the flood: what destroys (shachat) the earth's moral fabric is what will be destroyed (shachat) by the waters. The same root is used for both moral corruption and the flood-destruction.
How long, O Lord, must I call for help but You do not hear, or cry out to You, “Violence!” but You do not save?
The prophetic complaint about unanswered chamas: 'ez'aq eleikha chamas ve-lo toshia (I cry to you chamas/violence and you do not save).' Habakkuk 1:2-4 is the most theologically sophisticated complaint about the apparent passivity of YHWH in the face of violence. Chamas is the content of the prophet's cry — not merely 'help me' but 'violence!' as the cry to the judge who sees injustice.
YHWH's response (v. 5-11) announces the Babylonian judgment — which then raises the second complaint (v. 12-17): how can YHWH use an even more violent nation to judge Israel's violence? The final answer (2:2-4: 'write the vision... the righteous shall live by his faith/faithfulness') grounds the response to unanswered chamas in the certainty of YHWH's coming justice and the call to faithful waiting.
The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked; His soul hates the lover of violence.
YHWH's soul hates the chamas-lover: 'YHWH tsaddiq yivchon, ve-rasha ve-ohev chamas sane nafesh (YHWH tests the righteous, but the wicked and one who loves chamas his soul hates).' The oholev chamas (one who loves violence) is the object of YHWH's nafesh-hatred — the most intense form of divine disapproval. The context (Ps 11:4-6) is YHWH's righteous judgeship: 'his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of men' (v.
4). The chamas-lover is not hidden from YHWH's testing gaze; the violence done in secret is seen and hated.
For the wealthy of the city are full of violence, and its residents speak lies; their tongues are deceitful in their mouths.
Chamas in the prophetic indictment of economic exploitation: 'asher ashireha male-u chamas (for her rich men are full of chamas).' Micah 6:9-16 is the covenant lawsuit against Samaria; the chamas of the rich (v. 12) is paired with lying speech and deceitful weights (v. 10-11: 'can I forget the wicked scales... the bag of deceitful weights'). Chamas in this context covers both physical violence and economic exploitation: the unjust scales are chamas.
Micah 6:8's famous trio ('do justice, love kindness, walk humbly') is the antithesis of the chamas, lies, and deceit of verses 10-12.
Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and cut off forever.
Chamas done to a covenant-brother: Obadiah names the violence done to Jacob as the ground for Edom's shame and judgment. Obadiah's oracle against Edom is the prophetic application of the principle that chamas done to a covenant-community (Jacob) brings judgment on the perpetrator. The Edom-Jacob enmity (Jacob and Esau as brothers) makes the chamas of Edom's gloating over Jerusalem's fall a fratricidal covenant-violation.
The punishment is precisely calibrated: as you did, it shall be done to you (Obad 15: 'as you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head').
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. Violence rooted in injustice and exploitation; the wrong that produces unjust gain through force and oppression.
Violence rooted in injustice and exploitation; the wrong that produces unjust gain through force and oppression.
violence; by implication, wrong; by metonymy unjust gain BDB: violence Usage: cruel(-ty), damage, false, injustice, × oppressor, unrighteous, violence (against, done), violent (dealing), wrong.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 60 lexical occurrence verses.
חָמָס is built from this root:
The term reveals the destructive motives hidden beneath the speech of the wicked. Proverbs 10:11
The word reveals the destructive motives hidden within wicked speech. Proverbs 10:6
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
חָמָס (chamas) is one of the OT's most important moral-diagnostic words, and it operates at two levels simultaneously. At the cosmic level, chamas is the word that fills the earth before the flood (Gen 6:11) — it is not one sin but the pervasive moral corruption that makes covenant-life impossible. YHWH's response to a chamas-filled earth is to start again. At the prophetic-pastoral level, chamas is Habakkuk's cry in 1:2-3: 'I cry to you chamas and you do not save.'
The prophet names the violence of his world and brings it directly to YHWH as the complaint. YHWH's answer (Hab 2:2-4: 'the righteous shall live by his faithfulness') is not the immediate elimination of chamas but the call to faithful endurance while YHWH's certain judgment is coming. The preacher can hold these two levels together: chamas fills the world and YHWH sees it (Ps 11:4-5 — his eyes test; his soul hates the chamas-lover); the response to chamas-filled conditions is neither despair (YHWH is blind) nor presumption (YHWH will act instantly) but faithful waiting with the prophetic cry.
Habakkuk's three chapters model the complete response: cry (ch. 1), wait for the vision (ch. 2), praise before the answer comes (ch. 3: the habuqquq prayer of faith when the fig tree does not blossom).
Gen.6.11
חָמָס (chamas, H2555) is a noun that BDB classifies as covering violence in its broadest sense: physical assault, legal injustice, false witness, economic exploitation, and covenant-treachery. The ish chamas (man of violence, Ps 18:48, 2 Sam 22:49, Prov 3:31) is a recurring formula for a specific type of enemy characterized by violent wrongdoing. The verb חָמַס (chamas, H2554) means to treat violently or wrongfully (Gen 16:5 — Sarai says to Abraham 'may the Lord judge between me and you' after he gives Hagar to her — the verb is chamas in the sense of 'wrong done to me'; Hab 2:8 — 'for the violence done to Lebanon').
In NT Greek, the closest heir is adikia (G93 — unrighteousness/injustice, used in Luke 13:27, Acts 1:18, Rom 1:18, 1 Cor 13:6) and bia (G970 — force, violence, Acts 5:26, 21:35, 27:41) — but neither fully captures chamas's combination of moral wrong and physical force. The NT's treatment of violence as a systemic moral problem (Rev 6:10 — the souls under the altar: 'how long before you judge and avenge our blood?')
Echoes Habakkuk's chamas-complaint in the eschatological register.
Habakkuk 2:4 ('the righteous shall live by his faithfulness [emunatho]') is one of the most-cited OT verses in the NT: Romans 1:17 ('the righteous shall live by faith [ek pisteos]'), Galatians 3:11 ('the righteous shall live by faith'), and Hebrews 10:38 (quoting the LXX form). Paul's use of Habakkuk 2:4 as the charter of justification-by-faith is grounded in the prophetic response to chamas-filled circumstances: the righteous person who sees violence and waits faithfully for YHWH's justice is the model of faith.
Romans 1:18 ('for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness [adikian] of men') echoes the Genesis 6 chamas-diagnosis on a cosmic scale: the world is full of adikia/chamas and the wrath of God is the response. Revelation 6:9-11 gives chamas its eschatological-complaint form: the souls under the altar cry 'how long, O Lord, holy and true, before you judge and avenge our blood?'
— The Habakkuk-cry in the eschatological register. The answer is the same: 'rest a little longer' (Rev 6:11). The faithful waiting for YHWH's certain justice is the church's posture in a chamas-filled world.
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