TR: chamal → pheidomai (Sparing / Withholding Destruction)¶
The Chain¶
Hebrew OT LXX (Greek OT) Greek NT
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חָמַל (châmal) → φείδομαι (pheídomai) → φείδομαι (pheídomai)
H2550, 40v (55 tokens) Primary LXX equivalent G5339, 9v in NT
"spare, have pity, 33 co-occurrences "spare, refrain from,
have compassion" PMI 28.01 forbear"
OT Usage (Hebrew)¶
| Strong's | Word | Occurrences | Primary Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| H2550 | חָמַל (châmal) | 40 verses | withhold destruction, spare, have pity on |
| H2347 | חוּס (chûs) | 24 verses | spare (visual-emotional); stereotyped partner of châmal |
| H2820 | חָשַׂךְ (châsak) | ~28 verses | withhold, keep back (broader) |
| H7355 | רָחַם (râcham) | ~47 verses | have maternal/covenant compassion |
Key OT passages: - 1 Sam 15:3 — "smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare (châmal) them not" - Ezek 7:4 — "mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity (châmal)" - Lam 2:2 — "The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied (châmal)" - Mal 3:17 — "I will spare (châmal) them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him"
Canonical study: H2550-chamal.md
LXX Bridge¶
| Hebrew | Greek Translation | Co-occ | PMI | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| châmal (H2550) | φείδομαι (G5339) | 33x | 28.01 | Primary — dominant LXX equivalent |
| châmal (H2550) | ἐλεέω (G1653) | 8x | 12.64 | Secondary — when pity-nuance foregrounded |
| châmal (H2550) | περιποιέομαι (G4046) | 3x | 8.44 | Occasional — "preserve for oneself" |
Reverse mapping — what Hebrew words pheídomai translates:
| Hebrew | Greek Translates | Co-occ | PMI |
|---|---|---|---|
| châmal (H2550) | φείδομαι | 33x | 28.01 |
| chûs (H2347) | φείδομαι | 23x | 25.93 |
| châsak (H2820) | φείδομαι | 19x | 23.11 |
| râcham (H7355) | φείδομαι | 3x | 6.12 |
Semantic shift: Minimal. Pheídomai ("to be chary of, refrain, spare") captures the core châmal sense — withholding what one has power to inflict. The Greek verb collapses the Hebrew near-synonyms (châmal / chûs / châsak) into a single lexeme, so the fine distinctions between "pity-that-withholds" (châmal), "eye-that-pities" (chûs), and "hand-that-withholds" (châsak) blur in Greek. When the emotional/merciful nuance of châmal is foregrounded, LXX shifts to eleéō.
NT Usage (Greek)¶
| Strong's | Word | Occurrences | Primary Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| G5339 | φείδομαι (pheídomai) | 9 verses | spare, refrain, forbear |
| G5340 | φειδομένως (pheidoménōs) | 2 verses | sparingly (cognate adverb) |
Key NT passages:
- Rom 8:32 — "He that spared (pheídomai) not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" — a direct intertextual echo of the Aqedah (Gen 22:12 LXX "ouk epheisō tou huiou sou" / Heb. "lo châsaktâ"), but with God in Abraham's role and a decisive reversal.
- 2 Pet 2:4–5 — "if God spared (pheídomai) not the angels that sinned... spared not the old world" — YHWH-style judgment language ported directly: the God who "did not spare" of Lam 2 and Ezek 7 reappears in the NT apocalyptic register.
- Acts 20:29 — "grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock" — the classic châmal-as-predator-restraint idiom applied to false teachers.
- 2 Cor 1:23 — "to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth" — Paul inverts the judgment-sparing idiom to describe pastoral restraint.
- 1 Cor 7:28 — "I spare you" — apostolic compassion-restraint.
- Rom 11:21 — "if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee" — Paul applies châmal-style warning to Gentile believers.
Direct OT→NT Intertextual Echoes¶
| NT Verse | OT Background | Shared Language | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rom 8:32 | Gen 22:12 | "pheídomai / châsak the son" | The Aqedah language is reused: God "spared not" His own Son — what Abraham was stopped from doing, God completed. |
| 2 Pet 2:4–5 | Gen 6–7; 19 | "pheídomai not" the sinners | Echoes the Flood and Sodom judgment pattern where châmal is absent. |
| Rom 11:21 | Ezek 5:11; 7:4; 8:18 | "pheídomai not" | The Ezekielian formula "mine eye shall not spare" transferred to Gentile self-warning. |
| Acts 20:29 | Jer 50:14; 51:3 | "not pheídomai the flock" | Predator-imagery from Jeremiah's Babylon oracle repurposed for ecclesial threat. |
Continuity and Shifts¶
What stays the same across testaments: - The core action-concept: withholding an otherwise-warranted blow or destruction. - The negated form ("did NOT spare") as the rhetorically loaded construction — equally dominant in châmal and pheídomai usage. - The divine-subject framework: God as the one who either spares or declines to spare. - Collocation with destruction-verbs (OT: hârag, châram, nâkâh; NT: "deliver up," "cast down," "destroy").
What shifts: - The Hebrew triplet châmal / chûs / châsak — with fine distinctions between pitying-restraint, eye-pity, and hand-withholding — collapses into Greek pheídomai, flattening the distinctions. - The emotional-pity nuance of châmal migrates in many LXX contexts to eleéō (G1653, whence NT ἔλεος / eleos), so in the NT the "mercy" side of châmal's semantic field is largely carried by the eleos word-group rather than by pheídomai. - The gospel reversal in Rom 8:32: the châmal/châsak pattern of "a father spares his son" (Mal 3:17; Gen 22) is decisively broken — God does NOT spare — precisely to enact the deepest possible mercy. The withholding of châmal becomes the means of ultimate mercy.
Generated from: gather_trace_data.py, search_strongs.py (--lxx-map, --hebrew-source) Last updated: 2026-04-18