גָּזַר gâzar — to cut down or off
Translated in the KJV as cut down, decree, divide, snatch.
a primitive root; to cut down or off; (figuratively) to destroy, divide, exclude, or decide.
gâzar in each stem
Qal (Pa'al)
Imperative 2Wayyiqtol 2Imperfect (yiqtol) 1Participle (active) 1Perfect (qatal) 1
And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.
Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.
So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood.
Niph'al
Perfect (qatal) 6
And Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house, being a leper; for he was cut off from the house of the Lord: and Jotham his son was over the king’s house, judging the people of the land.
After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her.
Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.
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 ›