nadach · drive away, push

What it means

nadach (נָדַח) is a Hebrew word of the Bible that means “drive away, push”.

Push or drive away: move someone from his place or his path; also to be led astray or scattered.

How to say it

Approximate pronunciation. Vowels sound as in Spanish (a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in note, u as in rule); the syllable in bold is stressed. The voice is your device's.

Its senses in the Bible

1. To push a people far from their land.
2. To lead someone astray.
3. To swing an axe.

From Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906)

Word study

To push out, to drive someone away from his place: to banish, to scatter, to drive off; and, when what pushes is enticement, to draw someone away from his path. In the passive, the banished one, the straying sheep.

• YHWH scatters and then gathers the banished Deuteronomy 30:1Deuteronomy 30:4Jeremiah 23:3
• Being drawn away to other gods Deuteronomy 4:19Deuteronomy 13:5
• “The strayed”: the sheep the shepherd seeks Ezekiel 34:16Deuteronomy 22:1
• “The banished”: the people gathered Micah 4:6Zephaniah 3:19
• The banished one whom God does not leave far away 2 Samuel 14:14

Historical and cultural background

Deuteronomy 22:1 commands returning a brother’s ox or lamb that is “straying”. Ezekiel 34:16 uses the same word for the shepherd’s care: “the strayed I will bring back”.

How we translate it

The rendering follows the two senses. When YHWH is the subject, “banished” (10 times; “your banished ones”, Deuteronomy 30:4) or “driven” (“where I have driven them”, Jeremiah 23:3, and often in Jeremiah); when it is enticement toward other gods, “be drawn away” or “drag” (Deuteronomy 4:19; 13:5; 30:17). For sheep, “strayed” or “straying”. In Deuteronomy 19:5 it is the hand that “swings the axe”.

How it is translated

The words this translation uses for it, most frequent first.

• banished ×10
• I will drive ×5
• I have driven them ×3
• driven out ×3
• Driven Away ×2
• I have driven you ×2
• drag ×2
• strayed ×2
• they had been driven ×2
• I had driven them ×1
• others ×20

Related words

Words of the same family, by Strong’s numbering.

Where it appears

• Deuteronomy×10
• 2 Samuel×4
• 2 Kings×1
• 2 Chronicles×2
• Nehemiah×1
• Job×1
• Psalms×2
• Proverbs×1
• Isaiah×5
• Jeremiah×18
• Ezekiel×3
• Daniel×1
• Joel×1
• Micah×1
• Zephaniah×1

• Deuteronomy 4:19

  And so that you do not lift up your eyes to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the army of the heavens, and be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them; YHWH your Elohim has allotted them to all the peoples under all the heavens.

• Deuteronomy 13:5

  But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken turning aside against YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slaves, to drag you away from the way in which YHWH your Elohim commanded you to walk. So you shall remove the evil from among you.

• Deuteronomy 13:10

  You shall stone him with stones so that he dies, because he sought to drag you away from YHWH your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.

• Deuteronomy 13:13

  “Wicked men have gone out from among you and have dragged away the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ whom you have not known,”

• Deuteronomy 19:5

  as when someone goes with his neighbor into the forest to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down the tree, and the iron head slips off from the wood and strikes his neighbor so that he dies, he may flee to one of these cities and live,

• Deuteronomy 20:19

  When you besiege a city many days, fighting against it to capture it, you shall not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them, for from them you may eat, and you shall not cut them down. Is the tree of the field a human being, to come before you in the siege?

• Deuteronomy 22:1

  You shall not see your brother’s ox or his lamb straying and ignore them; you shall surely bring them back to your brother.

• Deuteronomy 30:1

  And it shall be, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you, and you take them back to your heart among all the nations where YHWH your Elohim has banished you,

• Deuteronomy 30:4

  If your banished ones are at the end of the heavens, from there YHWH your Elohim will gather you, and from there he will take you.

• Deuteronomy 30:17

  But if your heart turns away and you do not listen, and are drawn away and bow down to other gods and serve them,

• 2 Samuel 14:13

  The woman said, “Why then have you thought such a thing against the people of Elohim? For in speaking this word, the king is like one guilty, in that the king does not bring back his banished one.

• 2 Samuel 14:14

  For we will surely die, and we are like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up; but Elohim does not take away life, and he devises plans so that the banished one may not remain banished from him.

• 2 Samuel 15:14

  David said to all his servants who were with him in Jerusalem, “Get up, and let us flee, for there will be no escape for us from Absalom. Hurry to go, or he will quickly overtake us and bring the evil down on us and strike the city with the edge of the sword.”

• 2 Kings 17:21

  For he tore Israel from the house of David, and they made king Jeroboam son of Nebat; and Jeroboam drew Israel away from following YHWH and made them sin a great sin.

• 2 Chronicles 13:9

  Have you not driven out the priests of YHWH, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests like the peoples of the lands? Whoever comes to be ordained with a young bull and seven rams becomes a priest of what is not Elohim.

• 2 Chronicles 21:11

  He also made high places in the mountains of Judah, and made the inhabitants of Jerusalem prostitute themselves, and dragged Judah away.

• Nehemiah 1:9

  and if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your banished ones are at the end of the heavens, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell there.’

• Job 6:13

  Is it not that there is no help for me in me, and success has been driven away from me?

• Psalms 5:10

  Declare them guilty, Elohim; let them fall by their designs. In the abundance of their transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.

• Psalms 62:4

  Only from his height they have resolved to push him down; they delight in lies; with their mouth they bless, but inwardly they curse. Selah.

• Proverbs 7:21

  She turns him aside with the greatness of her teaching; with the smoothness of her lips she drags him along.

• Isaiah 8:22

  And he will look to the earth, and look, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and into thick darkness he will be thrust.

• Isaiah 13:14

  And it will be like a hunted gazelle, and like sheep with no one to gather them; each to his people they will turn, and each to his land they will flee.

• Isaiah 16:3

  Bring counsel, make a decision; make your shade like the night in the middle of noon; hide the banished, do not expose the wanderer.

• Isaiah 16:4

  Let my banished ones reside as aliens among you, Moab; be a hiding place for them from before the devastator. For the oppressor has come to an end, devastation has ceased, the tramplers have vanished from the land.

• Isaiah 27:13

  And it will happen on that day that a great horn will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria will come, and the dispersed in the land of Egypt, and they will bow down to YHWH on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

• Jeremiah 8:3

  And death will be chosen rather than life by all the remnant that remains of this evil clan, in all the places where they remain, where I have driven them, declares YHWH Tsevaot.

• Jeremiah 16:15

  but ‘As YHWH lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where he had driven them.’ And I will bring them back to their ground that I gave to their fathers.

• Jeremiah 23:2

  Therefore, thus says YHWH, the Elohim of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away, and you have not visited them; look, I am visiting upon you the evil of your deeds, declares YHWH.

• Jeremiah 23:3

  And I will gather the remnant of my sheep out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their abode, and they will be fruitful and multiply.

• Jeremiah 23:8

  but ‘As YHWH lives, who brought up and who brought the offspring of the house of Israel out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where I had driven them’; and they will dwell on their own ground.”

• Jeremiah 24:9

  And I will make them a dread, an evil, to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all the places where I will drive them.

• Jeremiah 27:10

  For they are prophesying falsehood to you, so as to remove you far from your land, and so that I will drive you out, and you will perish.

• Jeremiah 27:15

  For I have not sent them, declares YHWH, and they are prophesying in my name falsely, so that I will drive you out, and you will perish, you and the prophets who prophesy to you.”

• Jeremiah 29:14

  And I will be found by you, declares YHWH, and I will bring back your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares YHWH, and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.

• Jeremiah 29:18

  And I will pursue them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and I will make them a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, a curse and a horror and a hissing and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them,

• Jeremiah 30:17

  For I will bring up recovery for you, and from your wounds I will heal you, declares YHWH; for ‘Driven Away’ they have called you: ‘Zion is she; no one seeks her.’

• Jeremiah 32:37

  Look, I am gathering them from all the lands where I have driven them in my anger and in my fury and in great wrath; and I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them live in safety.

• Jeremiah 40:12

  Then all the Jews returned from all the places where they had been driven, and they came to the land of Judah, to Gedaliah at Mizpah, and they gathered wine and summer fruit in great abundance.

• Jeremiah 43:5

  But Johanan son of Kareah and all the chiefs of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned from all the nations where they had been driven to reside as aliens in the land of Judah:

And 12 more times.