Word studies · Hebrew · Strong's H539
אָמַן · ʼâman · appears 106 times in the Old Testament
In one line: Leaning your weight on a God who holds.
Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:6
Aman is to be firm, to trust, to say amen — believing God because He is reliable, not because belief is strong.
Aman describes Abraham believing the LORD and having it counted as righteousness, Israel failing to believe in the wilderness, and God's own faithfulness holding firm. The word puts the accent on the firmness of what is trusted rather than the intensity of the trusting.
Aman's root senses are to build up, support, and be firm — it can describe a nurse carrying a child and a doorpost standing steady. Trust, in Hebrew, is leaning your weight on something that will hold.
English “believe” has drifted toward opinion — believing that something is the case. Aman is closer to leaning: the question is not how sure you feel but whether what you are leaning on can take the load.
Aman (H539) appears 102 times in the Hebrew Bible, and gives us “amen” — a word we still say in Hebrew, meaning roughly “this is firm, let it stand.”
Genesis 15:6 makes Abraham's trust the pattern for how anyone is counted righteous, and Paul builds his case on that verse. Because the word is about firmness, faith's value lies entirely in its object — small faith in a firm God holds better than great confidence in anything else.
Put your weight on one promise of God this week in a way that would be foolish if it were not true. Faith is measured by what you lean on, not by how you feel while leaning.
properly, to build up or support; to foster as a parent or nurse; figuratively to render (or be) firm or faithful, to trust or believe, to be permanent or quiet; morally to be true or certain;
Then Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to my voice? For they may say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’”
Exodus 4:1Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth, so that You should tell me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries an infant,’ to the land that You swore to give their fathers?
Numbers 11:12But in spite of all this, you did not trust the LORD your God,
Deuteronomy 1:32But Sihon would not trust Israel to pass through his territory. So he gathered all his people, encamped in Jahaz, and fought with Israel.
Judges 11:20And Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became a nurse to him.
Ruth 4:16Press and hold believe in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.