To die (literally or figuratively); causatively, to kill
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מוּת (mut) is the Hebrew verb and its noun form מָוֶת (mavet) the word for death — one of the most frequent theological realities in the OT, indexed in the local Hebrew artifact at about 839 occurrences. Mut enters the story at the point of the first prohibition: 'In the day that you eat of it you shall surely mut' (Gen 2:17 — mot tamut, the emphatic infinitive absolute construction: dying you shall die).
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Full entry for מוּת (H4191) · Open the biblical lexicon
מוּת (mut) is the Hebrew verb and its noun form מָוֶת (mavet) the word for death — one of the most frequent theological realities in the OT, indexed in the local Hebrew artifact at about 839 occurrences. Mut enters the story at the point of the first prohibition: 'In the day that you eat of it you shall surely mut' (Gen 2:17 — mot tamut, the emphatic.
The BSB source-word alignment has 841 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include died (82), . . . (61), die (48), will die (37), to death (21).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 2:17. Its strongest book concentrations include Numbers (81), Genesis (78), 2 Samuel (74), 1 Samuel (59).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
מוּת (mut) is the Hebrew verb and its noun form מָוֶת (mavet) the word for death — one of the most frequent theological realities in the OT, indexed in the local Hebrew artifact at about 839 occurrences. Mut enters the story at the point of the first prohibition: 'In the day that you eat of it you shall surely mut' (Gen 2:17 — mot tamut, the emphatic infinitive absolute construction: dying you shall die). Death is not a natural feature of the created order but the consequence of disobedience, which makes its pervasiveness in the OT both an indictment and a problem to be solved. The OT does not settle for death as the final word.
Genesis 2:17 introduces the emphatic form mot tamut (dying you shall die) as the warning attached to the forbidden tree. The doubling of the root (infinitive absolute + finite verb) is the Hebrew way of expressing absolute certainty and intensity — 'you will certainly die.' When the serpent says 'you will not certainly die' (lo mot temutun, Gen 3:4), he uses the same construction to deny it. The tension between the divine mot tamut and the serpent's lo mot temutun is the first theological conflict in Scripture — a conflict about whether death is YHWH's word or can be circumvented.
Psalm 116:15 gives mut its most counterintuitive use: 'Precious in the sight of YHWH is the mut of his hasidim (faithful ones).' The death of YHWH's people is not beneath his notice or outside his concern — it is yakar (precious, costly, weighty) to him. This verse does not sentimentalize death but insists that YHWH values his people's deaths: no mut of a covenant person goes unnoticed or unmeasured.
Isaiah 25:8 announces the eschatological defeat of mavet: 'He will swallow up mavet (death) forever.' The same power of death (swallowing) is turned against death itself — YHWH swallows the swallower. Hosea 13:14 takes this further: 'O mavet, where are your plagues? O sheol, where is your sting?' — the taunt song over defeated death. Paul quotes this text in 1 Corinthians 15:55, applying it to the resurrection of Christ as the event that enacts the defeat.
For the preacher, מוּת (mut) is the word that names the enemy that Christ has defeated, that defines the stakes of every human life, and that makes the resurrection the most important announcement in the world.
מוּת (mut) is indexed in the local Hebrew artifact at about 839 occurrences across the OT. Genesis uses it for the death-warning and the entrance of death through disobedience. The Torah uses it for capital penalties and for the deaths of the patriarchs. The historical books use it for the deaths of kings, warriors, and servants of YHWH. The Psalms use it for the valley of the shadow of death, for YHWH's presence with the dying, and for the preciousness of the faithful's deaths.
The Prophets use it for the Servant's death, for the eschatological swallowing of death, and for the death of death. The noun mavet (H4194) is personified as a power — Death with a capital D — that the prophets ultimately declare defeated.
But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
The first mut: mot tamut, the emphatic infinitive absolute — 'dying you shall die.' This construction is the OT's strongest form of certainty, used for oaths and irreversible divine declarations. Death is here not a natural process but the declared consequence of disobedience to YHWH's word. The serpent's lo mot temutun (Gen 3:4) is the first lie in Scripture — a direct denial of the mot tamut.
The whole of soteriology begins here: if the mot tamut is YHWH's word and the serpent's denial is a lie, then the solution to death must come from YHWH, not from the serpent's alternative.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.
The preciousness (yaqar) of the mut of YHWH's hasidim (faithful, devoted ones): YHWH does not look away from the deaths of his covenant people — he regards them as costly and weighty. The verse comes in a psalm of deliverance from death (v. 3 — the cords of death encompassed me), but its import extends beyond the individual: every covenant death is precious to YHWH.
The practical implication for the bereaved congregation: those who die in faith are not forgotten or overlooked — their mut is precious, noted, and weighed by the God who will swallow death forever.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
The Servant's mut: his grave assigned with the wicked, his death (bemotav, plural of majesty) alongside the rich. The Servant's mut is the centerpiece of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 — he is cut off from the land of the living (53:8), he bears the iniquity of the many (53:11), and YHWH is pleased to crush him (53:10). The mut of the Servant is sacrificial and substitutionary: he dies for the transgressions of the people (53:8). This is the OT's most concentrated text on vicarious death — the mut of one for the many.
He will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face and remove the disgrace of His people from the whole earth. For the Lord has spoken.
The eschatological swallowing of mavet: YHWH swallows death with the same finality with which death swallows the living. The text uses the perfect tense (prophetic perfect) — it is so certain that it is spoken as already accomplished. The wiping of tears and the removal of reproach accompany the defeat of death: the eschatological victory is total and personal. Paul quotes this in 1 Cor 15:54 as fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
I will ransom them from the power of Sheol; I will redeem them from Death. Where, O Death, are your plagues? Where, O Sheol, is your sting? Compassion is hidden from My eyes.
The taunt over death: 'O mavet, where are your plagues (devarekha)? O sheol, where is your sting (qovetzkha)?' YHWH addresses death and sheol directly, taunting them with their own coming defeat. The ransom (padah, H6299) and redemption (ga'al, H1350) language ties the defeat of death to the covenant-rescue vocabulary. Paul quotes this taunt in 1 Cor 15:55, replacing 'plagues' with 'victory' and 'sting' with 'sting' (kentron, G2759) — the taunting of death as a defeated power at the resurrection is the NT's climax of the mut-theme.
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Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Moves from literal death to spiritual/covenantal death; God's instrument of judgment and consequence for covenant violation.
Moves from literal death to spiritual/covenantal death; God's instrument of judgment and consequence for covenant violation.
to die (literally or figuratively); causatively, to kill BDB: die Usage: × at all, × crying, (be) dead (body, man, one), (put to, worthy of) death, destroy(-er), (cause to, be like to, must) die, kill, necro(-mancer), × must needs, slay, × surely, × very suddenly, × in (no) wise.
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 839 lexical occurrence verses.
מוּת 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.
מוּת (mut) forces every preacher and congregation to face the central human problem: we are dying, and we are dying because of disobedience. Genesis 2:17's mot tamut is the theological ground of the gospel's urgency — there is no gospel without the mut. The preacher who never preaches on death cannot preach adequately on resurrection. Isaiah 25:8 gives the eschatological answer in the strongest possible terms: YHWH will swallow the swallower, death will be defeated by the only one who has the power to defeat it.
The trajectory from mot tamut (Gen 2:17) through the Servant's mut (Isa 53:9) to the swallowing of mavet (Isa 25:8) and the taunt of Hosea 13:14 is the OT's own gospel arc: the death that was threatened, the death that was borne vicariously, and the death that will be destroyed. For congregations facing bereavement, illness, or cultural despair, Psalm 116:15 offers the pastoral anchor: the mut of the faithful is precious to YHWH.
He does not look away. Every believer's death is costly in his sight — which means every believer's death is known, noted, and will be answered in the resurrection. The preacher's job is to hold the full weight of mut — naming it honestly, not minimizing it — and then to announce the defeat that is coming and has begun: 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting?'
Gen.2.17
מוּת (mut) is a stative verb in the Qal stem, meaning to be in a state of death or to enter that state (to die). The noun mavet (H4194) is personified in the OT as a power and in some texts (Ps 49:14, Prov 2:18, Hos 13:14) as an active agent — Death with a capital D. The Hiphil stem (hemit) is causative: to cause to die, to kill. The infinitive absolute construction mot tamut (Gen 2:17) is the grammatical intensification: the repetition of the root in both the infinitive absolute and the finite verb creates an emphatic declaration of certainty — 'you will certainly die.'
The Greek thanatos (death) and its verb apothnesko (to die) are the NT heirs of mavet and mut. Paul's 'last enemy' (1 Cor 15:26) refers to thanatos — the NT's name for the same power the OT called mavet.
The NT's entire soteriology is built on the mut-defeat arc of the OT. Romans 5:12 — 'sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned' — is the mot tamut of Gen 2:17 given universal scope. The answer is the mut of the one man who bore it: Romans 5:17-19 sets Adam's trespass against Christ's obedience, and the mut that came through Adam is answered by the life that comes through Christ.
First Corinthians 15 is the sustained NT treatment of mut-defeat: verse 26 names death as 'the last enemy to be destroyed'; verse 54 quotes Isaiah 25:8 ('death is swallowed up in victory'); verse 55 quotes Hosea 13:14 ('O death, where is your sting?') The resurrection of Christ is the event that gives Paul grounds to quote the OT's taunts — the taunt of Hosea 13:14 that was proleptic in the prophet is now backward-looking after Easter.
Hebrews 2:14-15 makes the logic explicit: 'he himself likewise partook of the same things [flesh and blood], that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.' The mut of the Son destroys the power of mut — the only way to defeat death was to die.
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