To loosen , i.e. relinquish , permit , etc.
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H5800, ʿāzaḇ, is a Hebrew verb whose central movement is leaving something or someone behind, but its actual force varies widely. A man leaves his parents to form a household; property is left in another person's care; a vulnerable worker or Levite may be neglected; a master abandons a sick servant; people forsake the LORD; a wicked person is called to forsake an evil way; and God promises not to forsake His people.
Reader summary
Full entry for עָזַב (H5800) · Open the biblical lexicon
H5800, ʿāzaḇ, is a Hebrew verb whose central movement is leaving something or someone behind, but its actual force varies widely. A man leaves his parents to form a household; property is left in another person's care; a vulnerable worker or Levite may be neglected; a master abandons a sick servant; people forsake the LORD; a wicked person is called to.
The BSB source-word alignment has 215 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include forsaken (9), forsake (7), abandon (6), forsake me (6), have forsaken (6).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 2:24. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (25), 2 Chronicles (23), Isaiah (22), Psalms (22).
H5800, ʿāzaḇ, is a Hebrew verb whose central movement is leaving something or someone behind, but its actual force varies widely. A man leaves his parents to form a household; property is left in another person's care; a vulnerable worker or Levite may be neglected; a master abandons a sick servant; people forsake the Lord; a wicked person is called to forsake an evil way; and God promises not to forsake His people. In Exodus 23 the same root participates in the instruction to release or help with a fallen animal's load. The object, relationship, obligation, and result determine whether leaving is faithful transition, entrusted care, neglect, betrayal, repentance, or judgment.
The verb often carries covenant weight. Israel abandons the Lord for other gods, and Chronicles warns that forsaking God leads to being forsaken under judgment. Yet the dominant promise to Jacob, Joshua, Israel, and worshiping communities is that the Lord remains present and will not abandon His people. Nehemiah remembers that even during rebellion God did not forsake Israel in the wilderness. Isaiah lets Zion voice the fear that the Lord has forgotten her, then answers with maternal compassion and restoration. These texts neither deny felt absence nor reduce every suffering to punishment. They locate lament, discipline, promise, and mercy inside a continuing covenant story.
Pastoral care must preserve the difference between necessary leaving and destructive abandonment. Genesis 2's new household does not authorize neglect of parents. Leaving danger, abuse, manipulation, or an unaccountable institution can be a faithful boundary rather than covenant betrayal. Conversely, using spiritual language to desert children, dependents, sick people, workers, or those entrusted to care repeats the harm Scripture exposes. Psalm 22 gives forsaken people words for honest prayer, while Isaiah 55 calls wrongdoers to abandon their way. H5800 supports both protective presence and repentant departure, with safety, responsibility, truth, and God's steadfast mercy held together.
H5800 names household transition, entrusted responsibility, non-neglect, abandonment, covenant apostasy, lamented absence, promised presence, repentance, and compassionate restoration across relationships shaped by distinct duties and outcomes.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Leaving marks the formation of a new primary household bond. It changes family relation without commanding contempt, disappearance, or neglect of aging parents.
Look, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
God's promise accompanies Jacob in displacement and uncertainty. Presence, protection, return, and fulfilled speech define not leaving in this patriarchal setting.
So Potiphar left all that he owned in Joseph’s care; he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome,
Here leaving means entrusting property to another person's administration. The verse shows that the root can mark delegated care rather than desertion.
If you see the donkey of one who hates you fallen under its load, do not leave it there; you must help him with it.
The repeated root contrasts walking away with helping release the burden. Enmity does not cancel responsibility toward an animal and neighbor in visible distress.
And be careful not to neglect the Levites as long as you live in your land.
The command turns leaving into social neglect of those without the same land inheritance. Worship centralization must not produce material abandonment of ministers and households.
Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or terrified of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Israel's courage rests on the Lord's accompanying presence at a leadership transition. The promise supports obedience to a named vocation, not reckless exposure to avoidable danger.
Thus they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed after various gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and provoked the Lord to anger,
Forsaking is defined by abandoning the delivering God for rival worship. Judges presents covenant betrayal, not merely emotional distance or a season of doubt.
Then David asked him, “To whom do you belong, and where are you from?” “I am an Egyptian,” he replied, “the slave of an Amalekite. My master abandoned me three days ago when I fell ill.
The sick enslaved man is discarded when he can no longer serve his master. David gives food and protection, exposing the cruelty of treating a vulnerable person as expendable.
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from my words of groaning?
The psalm gives covenant lament direct speech. Felt and experienced abandonment can be addressed to God without unbelief, while the whole psalm moves through prayer toward public praise.
Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.
The psalm imagines the failure of even foundational human care and sets the Lord's receiving presence against it. The promise should motivate community care, not excuse families or churches from it.
But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me!”
Zion's complaint is heard and answered rather than rebuked out of existence. The following maternal image affirms a compassion stronger than the community's perception of abandonment.
Let the wicked man forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.
Some leaving is repentance: a person abandons a destructive path and returns to divine mercy. Forsaking evil requires changed direction, not merely regretful language.
“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Jeremiah joins abandonment of the Lord to constructing failed substitutes. The image exposes both rejected life and the exhausting systems built to replace it.
You in Your great compassion did not forsake them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud never turned away from guiding them on their path; and by the night the pillar of fire illuminated the way they should go.
Israel's confession remembers continued guidance amid rebellion. Divine compassion does not call rebellion harmless, but it keeps judgment from becoming the final word.
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. To abandon or forsake by releasing grip; carries covenantal weight when God or humans violate relational commitments.
To abandon or forsake by releasing grip; carries covenantal weight when God or humans violate relational commitments.
to loosen, i.e. relinquish, permit, etc. BDB: restore Usage: commit self, fail, forsake, fortify, help, leave (destitute, off), refuse, × surely.
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 215 lexical occurrence verses.
עָזַב 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.
H5800 is morally shaped by relationship and responsibility. Genesis can use it for forming a new household and for entrusting property to Joseph, while Torah uses it to forbid leaving a fallen animal, an enemy-neighbor, or Levites without needed care. Narrative can expose a master who abandons a sick servant as expendable. Covenant history then makes forsaking the Lord a concrete turn toward rival worship, yet God's repeated promise is not to abandon His people.
Psalm 22 and Isaiah allow the anguish of perceived forsakenness to be spoken, and Nehemiah remembers divine compassion during rebellion. Isaiah 55 supplies the necessary reversal: the wicked should leave a destructive way and return for pardon. Faithful communities learn when to remain, when to release, when to leave danger, and when to repent, without using loyalty language to preserve abuse or individual freedom to excuse neglect.
Gen.28.15
H5800 is a verb occurring chiefly in the Qal, with passive forms for what is abandoned or left desolate. English leave, forsake, abandon, neglect, entrust, release, and permit represent context-shaped uses. The reviewed citation form is ʿāzaḇ. The artifact transliteration ʿăzāḇtānî belongs to Psalm 22:1's inflected phrase have You forsaken me and must not be presented as the lexical lemma.
Jesus takes Psalm 22's forsakenness language on His lips at the cross, while Acts proclaims that the Messiah was not abandoned to Hades. Hebrews repeats the promise that God will never forsake His people, and the letters describe both painful human desertion and gospel servants who remain. These connections deepen rather than cancel Israel's covenant, lament, and non-neglect settings.