Hebrew word · H5092

נְהִי

nehi

wailing

A lament or wail. Specifically, the dirge sung at a death, often performed by women, including professional mourning women.

Appears 7 times in 7 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated October 31, 2026

What it means

1) wailing, lamentation, mourning song

1a) wailing

1b) mourning song

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

Range of meaning: A lament or wail. Specifically, the dirge sung at a death, often performed by women, including professional mourning women.
Against the English: 'Mourning' (BSB) or 'lamentation' (KJV/ESV) are fine, but they can sound like private sorrow. Nəhî is the loud, public, formal funeral wail.
Used elsewhere in the period: Jeremiah 9:10, 18–20 [9–10, 17–19]: 'call for the mourning women… let them raise a nəhî over us… teach your daughters a nəhî'. Micah 2:4; Amos 5:16.

Range of meaning: Wailing or a dirge: loud, formal mourning, often performed by skilled mourning women. The related verb nāhâ (H5091) means 'to wail, lament'.
Against the English: KJV 'doleful lamentation' and BSB 'bitter lamentation' get the sense. No English version can keep the triple sound-play nāhâ nəhî nihyâ.
Used elsewhere in the period: Jer 9:10, 18–20 (Heb 9:9, 17–19) summons professional wailing women to raise a nəhî, and has 'a sound of nəhî heard from Zion: How (ʾêk) we are ruined (šuddādnû)!', the same three ingredients as Micah 2:4. Amos 5:16 speaks of 'those skilled in nəhî'. Jer 31:15: Rachel's 'wailing' in Ramah.

Jeremiah · 5

Jeremiah 9:10 וָנֶ֗הִי and wailing

I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

Here: A high, keening mourning cry. It is the same word as in Rachel's 'lamentation' in Ramah (Jer 31:15). It pairs with 'weeping' to make a single loud outpouring of grief.
Jeremiah 9:18 נֶ֑הִי wailing

Let them come quickly and take up a lament over us, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids may gush with water.
Jeremiah 9:19 נְהִ֛י wailing

For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”
Jeremiah 9:20 נֶ֔הִי a mourning song

Now, O women, hear the word of the LORD. Open your ears to the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters to wail, and one another to lament.
Jeremiah 31:15 נְהִי֙ a mourning song

This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Here: A formal funeral wail or dirge, the high-pitched keening women performed for the dead (Jer 9:10, 18–20). This is ritual mourning, not quiet tears.

Amos · 1

Amos 5:16 נֶֽהִי׃ <of> lamentation

Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says: “There will be wailing in all the public squares and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets. The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

Here: The lament song itself, the chanted dirge. The professionals 'know lament' the way a musician knows songs.

Micah · 1

Micah 2:4 נְהִ֤י a wailing

In that day they will take up a proverb against you and taunt you with this bitter lamentation: ‘We are utterly ruined! He has changed the portion of my people. How He has removed it from me! He has allotted our fields to traitors.’”

Here: The same root as the verb: 'wail a wailing'. Repeating the root intensifies it, and the noun is the word used for professional dirges in Jer 9 and Amos 5.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.