Word studies · Hebrew · Strong's H2416
חַי · chay · appears 498 times in the Old Testament
In one line: Living, and the God who is alive.
I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live,
Deuteronomy 30:19
Chay is living — life as breathing, moving, flourishing existence, and God Himself as “the living God.”
Chay describes living creatures, the living God who is contrasted with lifeless idols, and length of days as blessing. Deuteronomy makes it the stake of covenant obedience: “I have set before you life and death — therefore choose life.”
Chay comes from chayah, “to live,” and its range is concrete before it is abstract: raw flesh, fresh water, a strong animal, a running spring. Hebrew's abstract for “life” is the plural chayyim, as if life were too full to be counted singly.
Where Greek philosophy could discuss life as an idea, Hebrew keeps it physical — flocks, water, years, breath. That is why biblical hope is not escape from bodily life but its restoration, and why “the living God” is a claim about activity rather than existence.
Chay (H2416) appears 463 times in the Hebrew Bible, and the plural chayyim stands behind the Hebrew toast l'chaim — “to life.”
Naming God “the living God” marks the difference between the God of Israel and the idols, who have mouths but do not speak: He acts, and life comes from Him. That thread runs to the New Testament claim that in Christ “was life, and the life was the light of men.”
Ask where you are choosing what deadens rather than what gives life — in habits, in relationships, in what you feed your attention. Choose one thing today on the side of life.
alive; hence, raw (flesh); fresh (plant, water, year), strong; also (as noun, especially in the feminine singular and masculine plural) life (or living thing), whether literally or figuratively
So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:21and made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields. Every service they imposed was harsh.
Exodus 1:14Or if a person touches anything unclean—whether the carcass of any unclean wild animal or livestock or crawling creature—even if he is unaware of it, he is unclean and guilty.
Leviticus 5:2“Yet as surely as I live and as surely as the whole earth is filled with the glory of the LORD,
Numbers 14:21But you who held fast to the LORD your God are alive to this day, every one of you.
Deuteronomy 4:4No one shall stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so will I be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Joshua 1:5Press and hold life 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.