חָצִיר
cha.tsir (H2682A)
grass
AI Word Study
# חָצִיר (Grass) in Biblical Hebrew The Hebrew word *chatsir* refers to grass and appears 20 times throughout the biblical text. This relatively modest frequency suggests it held particular significance in specific contexts rather than being a common everyday term. The word's basic referent—grass as vegetation—is straightforward, yet its appearances in scripture often occur in passages concerned with themes of growth, sustenance, and the natural world's dependence on divine provision. The limited occurrences of *chatsir* indicate that biblical writers selected this term deliberately when discussing vegetation, typically in contexts emphasizing either the abundance of the land or the transient nature of earthly growth. Whether describing meadows, pastoral landscapes, or symbolic representations of human fragility, the word appears to carry weight beyond mere botanical description. Its presence in 20 passages distributed across the biblical corpus suggests it functioned as an important element in theological reflection on creation, providence, and mortality—themes where the imagery of grass, quickly growing yet easily withering, carried particular rhetorical power.
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Ahab said to Obadiah, “Go through the land, to all the springs of water, and to all the brooks. Perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, that we not lose all the animals.”
Therefore their inhabitants had little power. They were dismayed and confounded. They were like the grass of the field, and like the green herb, like the grass on the housetops, and like grain blasted before it has grown up.
While it is yet in its greenness, not cut down, it withers before any other reed.
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither like the green herb.
You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass.
As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
He causes the grass to grow for the livestock, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may produce food out of the earth:
Let them be as the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up,
who covers the sky with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who makes grass grow on the mountains.
The hay is removed, and the new growth appears, the grasses of the hills are gathered in.
For the waters of Nimrim will be desolate; for the grass has withered away, the tender grass fails, there is no green thing.
The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Grass with reeds and rushes will be in the habitation of jackals, where they lay.
Therefore their inhabitants had little power. They were dismayed and confounded. They were like the grass of the field, and like the green herb, like the grass on the housetops, and like a field before its crop has grown.
The voice of one saying, “Cry!” One said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, because Yahweh’s breath blows on it. Surely the people are like grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.”
and they will spring up among the grass, as willows by the watercourses.
“I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who will be made as grass?