חָמַל châmal — to commiserate

pronounced khaw-mal' · Strong's H2550 · 40 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible · 1 stem: Qal (Pa'al)

Translated in the KJV as have compassion, pity, spare.

a primitive root; to commiserate; by implication, to spare.

châmal in each stem

Qal (Pa'al) 40×

Simple · active — the plain action; the subject does it

Imperfect (yiqtol) 22Perfect (qatal) 9Wayyiqtol 6Jussive 2Sequential perfect (weqatal) 1

וַתַּחְמֹ֣ל Exod 2:6 Wayyiqtol, 3rd person feminine singular

And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. (KJV)

תַחְמֹ֥ל Deut 13:9 Imperfect (yiqtol), 2nd person masculine singular

But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. (KJV)

תַחְמֹ֖ל 1Sam 15:3 Imperfect (yiqtol), 2nd person masculine singular

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. (KJV)

What the stems mean

A Hebrew verb is its root letters set into a pattern. The pattern — the binyan — is the grammar's way of saying three things at once: whether the action is simple, intensive or causative, and whether its subject is active, passive or reflexive. That is why one Hebrew word can need six English ones. All seven binyanim, explained ›

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In the app, tap any Hebrew verb while reading: its root, stem and form are named, the letters of the word itself are coloured to show which is which, and the stem's meaning is put in plain English. châmal in the lexicon ›

Morphology from OpenScriptures MorphHB (CC BY 4.0); definitions from Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (public domain); text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex.

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