Hebrew word · H5370

נֵרְגָּ֑ל

neregal

Nergal

Proper name of a Mesopotamian god: lord of the underworld, bringer of plague, pestilence, war and sudden death. Usually pictured with a lion-headed mace or scimitar. Later he was linked with the planet Mars.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

§ Nergal = "hero"

one of the chief deities of Assyria and Babylon and worshipped by the men of Cuth

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

In depth

From the study of 2 Kings 17:30

Range of meaning

Proper name of a Mesopotamian god: lord of the underworld, bringer of plague, pestilence, war and sudden death. Usually pictured with a lion-headed mace or scimitar. Later he was linked with the planet Mars.

Against the English

All English versions transliterate 'Nergal', which is accurate. Readers simply miss what the name meant to the ancient world.

Used elsewhere in the period

Widely attested in cuneiform sources from the 3rd millennium BC onward. His chief temple was E-meslam at Kutha (Tell Ibrahim, Iraq). He is the hero of the myth 'Nergal and Ereshkigal', where he becomes king of the dead. His name appears in the Babylonian officer's name Nergal-sharezer ('Nergal, protect the king', Jeremiah 39:3, 13). He was still worshipped in the Roman period at Hatra and Palmyra. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 63b) explains his image as a rooster.

Where it appears

2 Kings · 1

  1. 2 Kings 17:30 נֵֽרְגַ֑ל Nergal

    The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima,

    Here: A well-known Mesopotamian god of the underworld, plague, war and sudden death, worshipped at his temple E-meslam in Kutha. Of the gods in this list he is the one we know best. The Hebrew spelling matches the Akkadian name exactly.

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