Word studies · Hebrew · Strong's H3374
יִרְאָה · yirʼâh · appears 45 times in the Old Testament
In one line: Awe of God that leads to trust and obedience.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 9:10
Yirah is fear that is reverence — the awe of God that produces trust and obedience rather than flight.
The fear of the LORD is the Old Testament's shorthand for right relationship with Him: it is called the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, it turns people from evil, and it is spoken of as something to be learned and taught. The same word can mean ordinary terror, so context does the work of telling them apart.
Yirah is the feminine noun from yare, “to fear,” a root covering everything from dread of an enemy to reverence before God. That single root holding both senses is deliberate: what is due to God is not a lesser emotion than fear but a rightly-aimed one.
English forces a choice between “fear” and “reverence,” and translations wobble between them. The Hebrew keeps the weight of the first inside the posture of the second — the response of a creature who has grasped who God actually is, and is therefore not afraid of anything else.
Yirah (H3374) appears 41 times in the Hebrew Bible, and Proverbs makes it the starting point of both wisdom and knowledge.
Fear of the LORD is where knowledge begins because it puts the knower in the right position: God is God, and you are not. It runs straight through to the New Testament, where perfect love casts out the fear of punishment without abolishing the awe.
Let awe come before advice in your decision-making — ask who God is before asking what to do. Spend a few minutes today with a passage about God's greatness rather than about your problem.
fear (also used as infinitive); morally, reverence
Abraham replied, “I thought to myself, ‘Surely there is no fear of God in this place. They will kill me on account of my wife.’
Genesis 20:11“Do not be afraid,” Moses replied. “For God has come to test you, so that the fear of Him may be before you, to keep you from sinning.”
Exodus 20:20This very day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon all the nations under heaven. They will hear the reports of you and tremble in anguish because of you.”
Deuteronomy 2:25The God of Israel spoke; the Rock of Israel said to me, ‘He who rules the people with justice, who rules in the fear of God,
2 Samuel 23:3He commanded them, saying, “You must serve faithfully and wholeheartedly in the fear of the LORD.
2 Chronicles 19:9So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our foreign enemies?
Nehemiah 5:9Press and hold fear of the lord 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.