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Hebrew

To waste

בָּלַקStrong’s H1110

balaq (ba-laq)

Appears in 2 verses of the Old Testament

In short

Balaq is the Hebrew word usually translated “about to devastate it” and “devastation”. It appears in 2 verses of the Old Testament.

“Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.”
Isaiah 24:1 KJV
Meaning
  1. To waste, lay waste, devastate(Poel) to make waste · (Pual) devastated (participle)
How it's translated
  • and about to devastate it 1
  • and devastation 1

Word-by-word English from the STEPBible tagged text.

Where it's used most
  • Isaiah 1
  • Nahum 1

2 books in all.

Related words
Explore in Scripture
Hebrew dictionary

בָּלַק balaq · to waste

1) to waste, lay waste, devastate 1a) (Poel) to make waste 1b) (Pual) devastated (participle)

From STEPBible’s Hebrew lexicon (based on Brown-Driver-Briggs).

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

How the English word “waste” was understood when the King James Version was still the common Bible of English readers.

WASTE, verb transitive

[G., Latin ]

  1. To diminish by gradual dissipation or loss.
  2. To cause to be lost; to destroy by scattering or by injury.
  3. To expend without necessity or use; to destroy wantonly or luxuriously; to squander; to cause to be lost through wantonness or negligence.“And wasted his substance with riotous living” Luke 15:13
  4. To destroy in enmity; to desolate; as, to waste an enemys country.
All definitions and other forms of “waste”
  1. To suffer to be lost unnecessarily; or to throw away; as, to waste the blood and treasure of a nation.
  2. To destroy by violence.
  3. To impair strength gradually.
  4. To lose in idleness or misery; to wear out.
  5. To spend; to consume.
  6. In law, to damage, impair or injure, as an estate, voluntarily, or by suffering the buildings, fences, etc.
  7. To exhaust; to be consumed by time or mortality.
  8. To scatter and lose for want of use or of occupiers.

WASTE, verb intransitive

  1. To dwindle; to be diminished; to lose bulk or substance gradually; as, the body wastes in sickness.“The barrel of meal shall not waste” 1 Kings 17:14
  2. To be diminished or lost by slow dissipation, consumption or evaporation; as, water wastes by evaporation; fuel wastes in combustion.
  3. To be consumed by time or mortality.“Gut man dieth, and wasteth away” Job 14:10

WASTE, adjective

  1. Destroyed; ruined.
  2. Desolate; uncultivated; as a waste country; a waste howling wilderness. Deuteronomy 32:10
  3. Destitute; stripped; as lands laid waste
  4. Superfluous; lost for want of occupiers.
  5. Worthless; that which is rejected, or used only for mean purposes; as waste wood.
  6. That of which no account is taken, or of which no value is found; as waste paper.
  7. Uncultivated; untilled; unproductive.

WASTE, noun

  1. The act of squandering; the dissipation of property through wantonness, ambition, extravagance, luxury or negligence.
  2. Consumption; loss; useless expense; any loss or destruction which is neither necessary nor promotive of a good end; a loss for which there is no equivalent; as a waste of goods or money; a waste of time; a waste of labor; a waste of words.
  3. A desolate or uncultivated country.
  4. Land untilled, though capable of tillage; as the wastes in England.
  5. Ground, space or place unoccupied; as the etherial waste
  6. Region ruined and deserted.
  7. Mischief; destruction.
  8. In law, spoil, destruction or injury done to houses, woods, fences, lands, etc., by a tenant for life or for years, to the prejudice of the heir, or of him in reversion or remainder. waste is voluntary, as by pulling down buildings; or permissive, as by suffering them to fall for want of necessary repairs.

Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Verse references are checked against the KJV. Read the full entry.

Verses are from the King James Version. Word meanings come from the original Hebrew, not from any one translation.