To surround , i.e. protect or aid
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H5826, ʿāzar, is a Hebrew verb for helping, aiding, supporting, or coming to another's assistance. Its subjects include the LORD, military allies, companions, leaders, and ordinary people; its recipients include patriarchs, armies, cities, worshipers, the powerless, the fatherless, the needy, and those near collapse.
Reader summary
Full entry for עָזַר (H5826) · Open the biblical lexicon
H5826, ʿāzar, is a Hebrew verb for helping, aiding, supporting, or coming to another's assistance. Its subjects include the LORD, military allies, companions, leaders, and ordinary people; its recipients include patriarchs, armies, cities, worshipers, the powerless, the fatherless, the needy, and those near collapse.
The BSB source-word alignment has 81 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include to help (8), helps (4), Help us (3), one to help (3), to help me (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 49:25. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (17), 2 Chronicles (14), Isaiah (12), 1 Chronicles (11).
H5826, ʿāzar, is a Hebrew verb for helping, aiding, supporting, or coming to another's assistance. Its subjects include the Lord, military allies, companions, leaders, and ordinary people; its recipients include patriarchs, armies, cities, worshipers, the powerless, the fatherless, the needy, and those near collapse. Participles can name a helper, while passive forms name the person helped. The verb does not make every form of support wise or righteous. Scripture evaluates help by the helper's power, the recipient's need, the cause being advanced, and the allegiance the act expresses.
Many passages confess the Lord as helper. Samuel's Ebenezer remembers help already received, Asa asks God to help the powerless against the mighty, Isaiah promises divine help to a fearful servant, and Psalms call God the helper of the fatherless and the needy. Divine help is personal and active, yet it does not make human participation unnecessary. David receives warriors, communities protect one another, and worshipers pray for assistance while taking responsible action. Need for help is not a spiritual defect; it is part of creaturely life and covenant interdependence.
Other passages warn that help can serve a corrupt cause or become a false refuge. Jehu confronts Jehoshaphat for helping the wicked in a military alliance, and Isaiah says Egypt's human and equine strength will fail when treated as the security that belongs to God. Those warnings do not forbid compassion toward wrongdoers, professional care, public assistance, or collaboration across difference. They require moral discernment about what the aid enables. Pastoral help should protect the vulnerable, strengthen agency, respect consent and expertise, avoid dependency as control, and refuse support that conceals abuse or advances injustice.
H5826 moves through patriarchal blessing, remembered deliverance, prayer from weakness, human alliance, failed security, divine reassurance, aid for the fatherless and needy, communal lament, and rescue from collapse.
By the God of your father who helps you, and by the Almighty who blesses you, with blessings of the heavens above, with blessings of the depths below, with blessings of the breasts and womb.
Jacob locates Joseph's fruitfulness in the God who helps and the Almighty who blesses. Help belongs to a larger blessing that spans land, family, and divine faithfulness.
Afterward, Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”
The memorial interprets a particular deliverance and the people's renewed turning to the Lord. Remembered help becomes a summons to continued fidelity, not nostalgia or a guarantee of ease.
Then Asa cried out to the Lord his God: “O Lord, there is no one besides You to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal prevail against You.”
Asa names the power imbalance and appeals to God's unmatched ability. Reliance is expressed through prayer amid action, not through denial of danger or refusal to prepare.
Jehu son of Hanani the seer went out to confront him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, the wrath of the Lord is upon you.
Military support for Ahab's campaign is judged by the alliance and cause it advances. The rebuke concerns enabling wicked power, not a ban on mercy toward sinful people.
For I was ashamed to ask the king for an escort of soldiers and horsemen to protect us from our enemies on the road, since we had told him, “The hand of our God is gracious to all who seek Him, but His great anger is against all who forsake Him.”
Ezra chooses a public act of reliance after his earlier testimony. His context-specific decision should not become a rule against security planning, civil protection, or asking qualified people for help.
But the Egyptians are men, not God; their horses are flesh, not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, the helper will stumble, and the one he helps will fall; both will perish together.
Judah's political reliance treats Egyptian strength as ultimate security. Isaiah distinguishes creaturely help from God without declaring every human helper worthless.
Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will surely help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
Divine help is joined to presence, strength, and upholding for God's servant. The promise answers fear with covenant identity rather than shaming the fearful person.
But You have regarded trouble and grief; You see to repay it by Your hand. The victim entrusts himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless.
God's help includes seeing violence and grief, receiving the victim's trust, and answering the oppressor. Care for the fatherless is inseparable from justice.
Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
The lament names both approaching trouble and the absence of human assistance. Prayer does not make social abandonment acceptable; it exposes the need for faithful presence.
Surely God is my helper; the Lord is the sustainer of my soul.
The psalm's confession answers violent pursuit by locating sustaining help in God. Confidence does not erase the threat or prevent the psalmist from naming hostile actors truthfully.
For he will deliver the needy who cry out and the afflicted who have no helper.
The ideal king's righteousness is measured by deliverance for people without powerful advocates. Royal help is public justice, not patronage that purchases loyalty.
Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; deliver us and atone for our sins, for the sake of Your name.
The communal plea holds external devastation and confession together. Help includes deliverance and atonement without reducing every victim's suffering to a private fault.
I was pushed so hard I was falling, but the Lord helped me.
Help arrives at the point of collapse and is remembered as the Lord's intervention. The testimony honors rescue without turning severe pressure into a required path to faith.
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. Aid through protective encirclement; fundamental covenantal language for God's sustaining help and deliverance of Israel
Aid through protective encirclement; fundamental covenantal language for God's sustaining help and deliverance of Israel
to surround, i.e. protect or aid BDB: help Usage: help, succour.
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 82 lexical occurrence verses.
עָזַר is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Expresses divine assistance in suffering.Isaiah 50:4-9
H5826 presents help as both gift and moral action. Israel remembers that the Lord has helped thus far; the powerless ask for aid against the mighty; the frightened servant hears that God will strengthen, help, and uphold; and the psalms identify God as helper of the fatherless, the needy, and the person near collapse. That divine identity shapes human vocation, especially the king's obligation to deliver people who have no helper.
Yet help is not automatically righteous. Jehoshaphat is rebuked because his alliance supports wicked power, and Isaiah exposes Egypt as a creaturely helper treated like God. Faithful assistance therefore asks what the support enables. Churches should make help accessible without humiliation, listen to recipients, use qualified care, protect victims, strengthen durable agency, and refuse aid that buys silence or shields abuse.
Trust in God and responsible human help ordinarily belong together.
Isa.41.10
H5826 is a verb used mainly in the Qal, with active participles functioning as helper and a passive form for the person helped. English help, aid, support, protect, and assist represent its contextual force. The selected artifact count is one token higher than the direct BSB word-table boundary, so quotations and passage claims follow the 81 governed rows rather than silently harmonizing the sources.
Jesus embodies royal attention to people without social power and teaches neighbor-love as concrete mercy. The Spirit distributes gifts for mutual good, the church bears burdens, and the letters honor coworkers without making any human minister indispensable. New Testament help remains accountable to truth, protection of the weak, and reliance on God rather than personality or institution.