Fightin' Words

In researching God is a Grunt, I had to do some deep dives into Greek and Hebrew words associated with war and military service. For funsies, I started making worksheets, mini-concordances, of words like army, war, and soldier. One of my favorites, because it reveals so much about the Israelite imagination, is lāḥam (H3898)

H3989, lāḥam

A three-consonant Hebrew root, lāḥam has a complex set of meanings that can infer both combat and consumption. As a noun, it becomes milḥāmâ (H4421), that which devours. Although most often rendered “fight/ing,” lāḥam retains its alternate meaning, as in Deuteronomy 32:24; “they shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured (lāḥam) by plague.” A derived adjective, ḥāmaš (H2571), armed, is closely related to ḥōmeš (H2570), obese.

But what really gets me, is that the Hebrew word for fighter, lokhém (לוחם), never appears in the Hebrew Scriptures and has no Strong’s Concordance number.  That, my friends, is no coincidence…