The Meaning of “Hope” in Hebrew

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If you’re looking forward to something or anticipating it, you might describe yourself as “giddy,” “excited,” or “hopeful.” Hope is a state of anticipation that is crucial for healthy human existence. If you’ve ever known someone who had no hope, they probably weren’t doing so well.

Hope is also a crucial concept in the Bible. There are two main words that translate to “hope” in the English Old Testament (OT). The one covered in this topic is “yakhal” (יָחַל), which often means “to wait.”

Another common word is “qavah” (קָוָה), which comes from the root word meaning “cord.” This verb has to do with the tension of anticipation of waiting for something, like when a cord is pulled tightly and becomes tense until it snaps and the tension releases. (See excursus 1 for resources.)

Hope Isn’t Just Optimism

In the story of Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6-9), Noah and his family had to “yakhal” (wait) for weeks for the waters to recede. Isaiah refers to God as a farmer who “qavah’s” and waits with anticipation for good grapes. Micah talks about how farmers both yakhal and qavah for the morning dew that nourishes their crops.

In Hebrew, “hope” isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky dream of what may be. It’s about real anticipation for something better, something you truly believe is coming. That’s why Isaiah said in Isaiah 8:17 that he was waiting with anticipation for God to show himself again, for he had hidden himself from Israel because of their consistent sinfulness. Isaiah’s only hope during those dark days was the hope of God himself.

Yakhal and qavah appear over forty times in the Psalms. And in every use of the words in Psalms, the people are always “waiting” (or hoping) for God himself (Psalm 130:5-7).

Biblical hope is based on a person, not on optimism. Optimism is about choosing to see how circumstances, however difficult, could work out for the best.  Biblical hope isn’t about circumstances. People who yakhal or qavah in the Bible often recognize that there’s really no way anything’s going to get better, but they choose hope anyway. The didn’t really see how anything could get better.

The prophet Hosea lived in a time when Israel was oppressed by foreign empires – there wasn’t a lot of optimism to go around. But he chose hope. He believed God turn the valley of trouble into a gateway of hope (Hosea 2:15), like when Israel came out of Egypt. God had surprised his people with hope in the past, and he could do so again.

God’s Past Acts Give Us Hope for the Future

God’s past acts were the basis of hope for the Hebrew prophets. Their hope was invested in the fact that God had saved them before and he could do so again. The Israelites were always looking back to God’s deliverance of his people from Egypt as the basis of their identity and hope, so biblical hope is about looking forward by first looking backward (Psalm 39:7).

The early Christians believed that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection was God’s surprising response to humanity’s slavery to evil and death. The empty tomb of Jesus was a new “gateway of hope.” The Greek word “elpis” (ἐλπίς) was used to describe this anticipation in the New Testament (NT). The Apostle Peter wrote that we have a “living hope” in Jesus Christ which would allow us to be reborn into new and different kinds of humans – humans filled with the Holy Spirit and reborn in the image of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:3). The Apostle Paul preached that the good news about Jesus was the “hope (elpis) of glory.”

In both Peter and Paul’s cases, the elpis they spoke of was, like the prophets’ words about God, rooted in a person – Jesus Christ, who overcame death. And this hope was not merely for the resurrection of Jesus, but for the results of that resurrection. God’s plan since sin entered creation has been to renew that creation back to its original, intended glory and purpose. As Paul wrote in Romans 8, we hope for the liberation of God’s creation from corruption through the work of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:18-23).

Christian hope is a bold hope that looks back to the risen Jesus in order to look forward. It is not just about having an optimism that everything will work out in the end. It’s a hope in the work and person of Jesus Christ that creation cannot – will not – remain how it is. And that is the greatest hope of all.

Excursus 1

Check out the following links to resources about biblical words related to hope:

• [External Resource: “Yachal” in Strong’s Concordance]
• [External Resource: “Qavah” in Strong’s Concordance]
• [External Resource: “Elpis” in Strong’s Concordance]