Hebrew word · H7283
רָגַשׁ
rageshu
to throng
Used as a verb only here in the Hebrew Bible. Related words show the range: the noun regeš means 'throng, crowd' (Psalm 55:14, 'we walked in the throng to God's house'), and rigšâ means 'tumult, scheming mob' (Psalm 64:2, 'the noisy crowd of evildoers').
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) (Qal) to be in a tumult or commotion
2) (TWOT) to conspire, plot
Aramaic equivalent: re.gash (רְגַשׁ "to throng" H7284)
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
- Range of meaning
Used as a verb only here in the Hebrew Bible. Related words show the range: the noun regeš means 'throng, crowd' (Psalm 55:14, 'we walked in the throng to God's house'), and rigšâ means 'tumult, scheming mob' (Psalm 64:2, 'the noisy crowd of evildoers'). The Aramaic of Daniel 6:6, 11 and 15 uses the same root in its causative form for the officials who 'came thronging' or 'came by agreement' to the king to trap Daniel. The core idea is a group in noisy, agitated motion, gathering together, often with plotting in mind.
- Against the English
'Rage' (KJV, BSB, ESV, WEB) can work if it is heard in its older sense, the way the sea or a storm 'rages': tumult and uproar. A modern reader usually hears an emotion, being furious. NASB's 'in an uproar' and YLT's 'tumultuously assembled' keep the crowd-in-motion picture. NIV's 'conspire' draws on the Daniel 6 sense of a group acting together.
- How it drifted
In older English 'rage' commonly described violent motion (raging seas, raging fever). As the word narrowed to mean anger, the verse came to sound like a statement about how hostile the nations feel, not a picture of them massing and stirring against the king.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Septuagint renders it ἐφρύαξαν (ephryaxan), 'they snorted, were insolent': the word for a spirited horse rearing and snorting. Acts 4:25 quotes this Greek. Jerome's Latin from the Septuagint has fremuerunt, 'they roared, raged'. The Aramaic of Daniel 6 is the closest outside use of the verb itself.
Where it appears
Psalms · 1
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Psalm 2:1 רָגְשׁ֣וּ do they plot
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
Here: A rare verb. Its related words describe a noisy crowd surging together, and in Aramaic a group coming in a body to plot (Daniel 6). It pictures the nations in uproar, massing together, more than it pictures their inner feeling of anger. The form looks at the action as already under way: 'why have they thronged?'
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.