Hebrew word · H889

בְּאֹשׁ

be'osh

stench

A stench or putrid smell, from a root meaning 'to stink, rot'. Elsewhere it is consistently tied to rotting corpses or decay.

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated November 08, 2026

What it means

stench, foul odour

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 stench or putrid smell, from a root meaning 'to stink, rot'. Elsewhere it is consistently tied to rotting corpses or decay.
Against the English: English 'stench of your camp' could suggest poor sanitation. The Hebrew word points to the smell of the dead. Some modern paraphrases make this explicit ('the stench of death'), which is fair to the sense.
Used elsewhere in the period: Isa 34:3: 'their corpses—their stench shall go up'. Joel 2:20: 'its stench will go up', of the dead locust army. Both use the same verb 'go up' (ʿalah) with this noun, so 'stench goes up' was a fixed way of describing unburied dead.

Range of meaning: Stench, the smell of decay. It comes from a verb meaning "to stink." That verb is used for the Nile with its dead fish (Exodus 7:18), for manna that went bad (Exodus 16:20), and as a figure of speech for making yourself hateful to others (Genesis 34:30; 1 Samuel 13:4; 2 Samuel 10:6).
Against the English: KJV's "stink" is blunt, and "stench" is just as accurate. Hebrew grammar makes the stench the subject that "goes up," with "their corpses" set first for emphasis. NLT has the stench "fill the land," which spreads it outward and drops the image of it rising.
Used elsewhere in the period: The noun occurs only three times. Joel 2:20 has "its stench will go up (wəʿālâ ḇāʾəšô)," the same pairing of verb and noun as here, used of a destroyed northern army. Amos 4:10 has "I made the stench of your camps rise into your nostrils," also after slaughter in battle.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 34:3 בָאְשָׁ֑ם stench their

Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.

Here: "Their stench." A rare word for the smell of rotting things, used only here, in Joel 2:20 and in Amos 4:10. It is the grammatical subject of "will go up."

Joel · 1

Joel 2:20 בָאְשׁ֗וֹ stench its

The northern army I will drive away from you, banishing it to a barren and desolate land, its front ranks into the Eastern Sea, and its rear guard into the Western Sea. And its stench will rise; its foul odor will ascend. For He has done great things.

Here: The stink of rotting bodies. Elsewhere it is used only for corpses (Isa 34:3) and for the stench of a destroyed camp (Amos 4:10).

Amos · 1

Amos 4:10 בְּאֹ֤שׁ [the] stench of

“I sent plagues among you like those of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.

Here: A putrid smell, used elsewhere of rotting corpses (Isa 34:3; Joel 2:20). It is not just an unpleasant camp smell. It is the smell of unburied dead.

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