To snatch away, whether in a good or a bad sense
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נָצַל is the verb of urgent rescue — the act of snatching someone from a grip that holds them. Where גָּאַל (H1350) describes redemption through the obligation of kinship, נָצַל describes the physical force of the rescue act itself: to deliver, to pull free, to snatch away from danger.
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Full entry for נָצַל (H5337) · Open the biblical lexicon
נָצַל is the verb of urgent rescue — the act of snatching someone from a grip that holds them. Where גָּאַל (H1350) describes redemption through the obligation of kinship, נָצַל describes the physical force of the rescue act itself: to deliver, to pull free, to snatch away from danger.
The BSB source-word alignment has 213 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include deliver (16), deliver me (9), . . . (5), to deliver (5), and deliver (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 31:9. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (45), Isaiah (22), 1 Samuel (17), Ezekiel (17).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
נָצַל is the verb of urgent rescue — the act of snatching someone from a grip that holds them. Where גָּאַל (H1350) describes redemption through the obligation of kinship, נָצַל describes the physical force of the rescue act itself: to deliver, to pull free, to snatch away from danger. BDB's primary definition is 'to snatch away, deliver, rescue' — the image is of something pulled out of the hand of an enemy, stripped away from a power that had hold of it.
The verb appears more than 200 times in the OT and spans a remarkable range from the most immediate physical danger (the lion that tears the sheep, the enemy who captures the prisoner) to the broadest theological claim (God who delivers his people from every hand that holds them). The word's directness distinguishes it from the covenantal vocabulary of גָּאַל.
נָצַל is not the vocabulary of prior obligation or kinship right — it is the vocabulary of the decisive intervention itself, the moment when the delivering God moves between his people and what threatens them. The Psalms are saturated with נָצַל. 'Deliver me from my enemies, O my God' (Ps 59:1). 'He delivers the needy when he cries, the poor also, and him who has no helper' (Ps 72:12).
'You who love the Lord, hate evil. He preserves the souls of his saints. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked' (Ps 97:10). The word carries an urgency the covenantal redemption terms do not: this is the person in the lion's mouth, the prisoner in the enemy's hand, the drowning man — and נָצַל is the word for the grip being broken. In the prophets, נָצַל describes both God's past deliverance of Israel from Egypt and his promised future deliverance from exile.
In the NT, σῴζω (to save) and ῥύομαι (to rescue/deliver) carry the weight of נָצַל in the salvation vocabulary — the urgent rescue of those who cannot rescue themselves.
נָצַל is currently counted by the local OT index at about 213 uses in the OT across three primary registers: (1) everyday rescue from immediate physical danger (from lions, enemies, drowning); (2) God's historical deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Exodus narrative and its liturgical rehearsal in Psalms/Deuteronomy); (3) prophetic promises of future rescue from exile and oppression. All three registers share the image of someone held in a grip from which they cannot free themselves, and God's decisive act of pulling them out.
I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
God's self-declaration at the burning bush uses נָצַל for the Exodus mission. 'Deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians' — the hand is the governing image: Egypt holds Israel, and נָצַל is the act of breaking that hold. The following phrase 'bring them up' is a different verb (עָלָה, the ascent), showing that נָצַל names the rescue moment itself — the departure from the grip — not the journey to the destination.
The Exodus use of נָצַל establishes the paradigm: God descends to where his people are held, and his נָצַל is the decisive intervention that breaks the enemy's grip.
“He trusts in the Lord, let the Lord deliver him; let the Lord rescue him, since He delights in him.”
The mockers' taunt at the suffering servant uses נָצַל twice: 'let him deliver him, let him rescue him.' The irony of this Psalm is that the taunt becomes the prayer: Psalm 22 moves from the cry of dereliction ('My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?') to the declaration that God has heard and delivered. The NT applies this Psalm to the crucifixion (Matt 27:43, quoting this verse verbatim).
The mock of 'let him deliver him' becomes the pattern for the resurrection: God did נָצַל his Son, not from the cross but through it. נָצַל here is the word that carries both the apparent absence of God (why has he not rescued?) and the ultimate vindication (he rescued through death).
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears; He delivers them from all their troubles.
One of the Psalter's most concentrated statements of נָצַל theology. The structure is: cry, hear, deliver. נָצַל is always the response to a cry from a position of need. The phrase 'out of all their troubles' is the sweeping scope of the deliverance — no trouble is excepted from the reach of God's נָצַל. This verse and its surrounding context (Ps 34:15-22) form the classic OT statement of God's rescue of the righteous, repeatedly cited in the NT for its claim that the divine eye watches over the just and the divine ear bends toward their cry.
Even to your old age, I will be the same, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you, and I will carry you; I will sustain you and deliver you.
Isaiah's portrait of God as the one who carries from birth to old age ends with נָצַל. The sequence of verbs — made, carried, borne, delivered — forms a lifecycle of care. Where the idols must be carried by their worshippers (46:1-2), the Lord carries his people. The נָצַל that closes the statement is the life-scope of God's rescue: not a one-time intervention but a commitment extending from creation to death and beyond.
The contrast with the idol-gods who cannot carry themselves, let alone their devotees, makes נָצַל here a word about the qualitative difference between a god who delivers and gods who do not.
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. Forceful removal from danger or possession; God's primary rescue verb emphasizing sudden, decisive intervention.
Forceful removal from danger or possession; God's primary rescue verb emphasizing sudden, decisive intervention.
to snatch away, whether in a good or a bad sense BDB: strip Usage: × at all, defend, deliver (self), escape, × without fail, part, pluck, preserve, recover, rescue, rid, save, spoil, strip, × surely, take (out).
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 5 selected witnesses from 213 lexical occurrence verses.
נָצַל is a primitive root - no further derivation.
The verb emphasizes the rescuing power associated with righteousness. Isaiah 36:11-22
The verb highlights the rescuing power associated with righteousness. Proverbs 11:4
Wisdom protects the righteous from destructive influence. Proverbs 11:6
The command emphasizes the urgency of escaping harmful obligations. Proverbs 11:9
Central to the debate over the Lord’s saving power. Proverbs 6:1-5
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
נָצַל describes God's rescue from the perspective of the one who is held. The person in need of נָצַל is not in a difficult situation that could be improved with better choices — they are in someone else's grip. The enemy holds them. The lion has them. The deep waters close over them. נָצַל is the word for when the grip is broken from outside: God descends (Exod 3:8), intervenes, and tears the person free.
The pastoral register of this word is unmistakable in the Psalms. The person crying for נָצַל is not passive — they cry, they pray, they trust — but the deliverance is entirely from God, not from their own effort. 'The righteous cry, and the Lord hears, and delivers them' (Ps 34:17). Psalm 22's movement from 'why have you forsaken me' to 'he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one' is the theology of נָצַל in narrative form: the cry is real, the silence is real, and the deliverance comes in God's time and God's way — including through the experience of abandonment rather than around it.
The NT application is the resurrection. The mockers at the cross quote Psalm 22:8: 'let God deliver him.' God does deliver him — through death and out the other side. נָצַל at Calvary is not the prevention of the cross but the vindication beyond it. The preacher who holds this word has a corrective to the prosperity-gospel version of deliverance: God's rescue does not always mean removal from the situation.
Sometimes it means walking through it and being carried out the other side.
Ps.34.17
נָצַל appears in qal, niphal, piel, and hiphil stems. The qal means 'to be snatched away'; the niphal 'to escape, be delivered'; the hiphil (most common) 'to snatch away, deliver, rescue.' BDB's first definition for the hiphil is 'to snatch away, deliver' — the urgency and force of the rescue act is embedded in the word's basic form. The word's range in BDB includes both 'to take away for oneself' (spoils taken from the enemy) and 'to deliver from an enemy' — both uses share the image of something removed from a grip.
The range extends from the lion's mouth (1 Sam 17:37, David's rescue from the lion and bear) to the enemy's hand (Jer 39:17) to the waters of death (Ps 69:14). The LXX translates נָצַל with ῥύομαι and σῴζω, the same verbs the NT uses for salvation and rescue.
The NT inherits נָצַל through two Greek words. ῥύομαι (to rescue, deliver) appears in the Lord's Prayer ('deliver us from evil,' Matt 6:13), in the Pauline declarations of divine rescue (2 Cor 1:10, 'he delivered us from so great a death'), and in the eschatological promise of Romans 11:26 (citing Isa 59:20, 'the Deliverer will come from Zion'). σῴζω (to save) carries the broader soteriological weight of נָצַל but with the additional connotation of final salvation rather than just immediate rescue.
The Psalms' cry-hear-deliver structure (Ps 34:17) becomes the NT's intercessory prayer structure: 'call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you' (Ps 50:15) is fulfilled in Jesus's invitation 'come to me, all who are weary and burdened' (Matt 11:28). The cross applies the Psalm 22 dynamic to the full redemption event: the cry of dereliction is real, the silence is real, and the נָצַל comes through resurrection — God delivering his Son through death rather than from it.
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