Hunger (more or less extensive)
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H7458 is a Hebrew noun for hunger, famine, or severe scarcity of food, and Amos 8 uses it figuratively for deprivation of hearing the LORD's words. Genesis 41 connects famine with prudent preparation, Ruth shows famine driving migration, and 2 Kings exposes siege-created deprivation.
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Full entry for רָעָב (H7458) · Open the biblical lexicon
H7458 is a Hebrew noun for hunger, famine, or severe scarcity of food, and Amos 8 uses it figuratively for deprivation of hearing the LORD's words. Genesis 41 connects famine with prudent preparation, Ruth shows famine driving migration, and 2 Kings exposes siege-created deprivation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 101 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and famine (20), famine (15), the famine (12), of famine (10), by famine (8).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 12:10. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (33), Genesis (24), Ezekiel (14), 2 Kings (5).
H7458 is a Hebrew noun for hunger, famine, or severe scarcity of food, and Amos 8 uses it figuratively for deprivation of hearing the Lord's words. Genesis 41 connects famine with prudent preparation, Ruth shows famine driving migration, and 2 Kings exposes siege-created deprivation. The noun names real communal crisis and must not be reduced to a private spiritual lesson.
It does not prove that hungry people caused their suffering, authorize hoarding, or justify withholding aid until recipients meet religious conditions. H7458 helps teachers address disaster planning, war, displacement, food access, economic injustice, lament, and the need to hear God's word while rejecting victim blame, prosperity formulas, exploitative pricing, coercive charity, and the spiritualizing of hunger that ignores bodies.
H7458 names embodied hunger and regional famine caused or intensified by environmental, political, military, and economic conditions. Its figurative use in Amos depends on the concrete horror of food scarcity and serves prophetic judgment rather than erasing material need.
But seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will devastate the land.
Joseph warns that seven years of famine will follow abundance and consume the land's remembered plenty, prompting advance public preparation.
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a certain man from Bethlehem in Judah, with his wife and two sons, went to reside in the land of Moab.
A famine in the land drives Elimelech's family from Bethlehem to Moab, placing scarcity within migration, bereavement, and vulnerable household life.
So there was a great famine in Samaria. Indeed, they besieged the city so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter cab of dove’s dung sold for five shekels of silver.
Samaria's siege produces a severe famine and extreme prices, showing hunger intensified by warfare and constrained access.
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
Amos announces a figurative famine of hearing the words of the Lord as judgment for persistent injustice and rejected warning.
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. Famine as extended collective hunger; shifts from individual need to societal crisis and divine judgment.
Famine as extended collective hunger; shifts from individual need to societal crisis and divine judgment.
hunger (more or less extensive) BDB: famine Usage: dearth, famine, famished, hunger.
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 4 selected witnesses from 101 lexical occurrence verses.
רָעָב is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H7458 makes scarcity a public and pastoral reality. In Genesis 41, the warning of famine produces storage, administration, and preparation during years of abundance. Ruth begins with a family crossing a border because food has failed, reminding readers that migration decisions often arise from survival rather than disloyalty. Second Kings shows siege weaponizing access to food and generating grotesque suffering and inflated prices.
Amos borrows famine's terror to describe the judgment of no longer hearing the word people have persistently rejected, but his metaphor gains force from real deprivation and from the book's condemnation of economic exploitation. Churches should therefore resist neat explanations that blame hungry households. Faithful response includes direct food, dignified access, cash or material relief, transparent distribution, advocacy, agricultural and emergency planning, attention to disability and dietary need, and refusal to exploit shortages.
Spiritual teaching and bodily care belong together. H7458 summons communities to hear God's justice and to share provision without surveillance, proselytizing pressure, favoritism, or shame.
Gen.41.30
H7458 is a Hebrew noun for hunger or famine and can describe personal want or broad food scarcity. Amos 8:11 marks a deliberate metaphorical extension to famine of hearing God's words, which should not be imposed on every occurrence.
Old Testament famine narratives involve planning, migration, siege, covenant warning, prophetic critique, and divine provision. New Testament famine texts continue the material reality through relief giving, mission, suffering, and eschatological warning while Jesus identifies care for hungry people with service to him.