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Quick answer: The Hebrew word usually translated “lamb” is seh (שֶׂה, pronounced seh), Strong’s H7716. But seh does not name a species. It names one animal taken out of a flock – and Exodus 12:5 says so in plain English: “ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats.” So the Passover “lamb” could lawfully have been a young goat. Seh means the single one, the one picked out.
Word Study: Where It Comes From
Most Hebrew nouns can be opened up like a box, because a verb is sitting inside them. Seh is not one of those. It belongs to the oldest layer of the language – a primitive noun with no verb underneath it, the kind of word a people brings with them rather than builds. There is nothing to unpack etymologically. What there is instead is usage, and the usage is remarkably precise.
The cleanest proof sits in a food list. Deuteronomy 14:4 reads in the KJV, “These are the beasts which ye shall eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat.” In Hebrew that line is shor, seh kesavim, u-seh izzim – “an ox, a seh of sheep, and a seh of goats.” The word appears twice in a single verse and is modified both times, because on its own it does not tell you which animal you are looking at. Seh carries the “one,” and the word attached to it carries the species.
The second thing to notice is what seh almost never does: become plural. Hebrew already had a word for the many – tso’n, the flock, sheep and goats together as one moving mass. So seh exists in contrast to tso’n. It is the singular pulled out of the crowd: the one you separate, count, carry home and can actually look at.
That is why Exodus 12 is written the way it is. “They shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house” (Exodus 12:3). One seh per household – and if the household was too small to eat a whole one, Exodus 12:4 tells them to go in with the neighbours and “make your count for the lamb.” The animal was chosen on the tenth day of the month and not killed until the fourteenth. Four days in the house with the single one. The word for the animal means “the individual,” and the instruction is to live alongside it before it dies.
Where This Word Appears in the Bible
| Reference | KJV Text | What the word is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Genesis 22:7 | “Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” | Isaac’s question, asked with this exact word |
| Genesis 22:8 | “And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.” | Abraham answers using Isaac’s exact word |
| Exodus 12:3 | “…they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:” | One seh per household – the word’s “single one” sense doing real work |
| Exodus 12:5 | “Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:” | Scripture itself explaining that seh is not species-specific |
| Isaiah 53:7 | “…he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.” | Seh applied to a person, not an animal |
Verse Deep Dive: Genesis 22:7-8
Walking up the mountain with the fire and the wood, Isaac asks the obvious question: “where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:7). The word he uses is seh. Abraham’s reply in the next verse uses the same word back to him – the seh will be provided.
Then read verse 13 slowly: “behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.” A ram. The Hebrew is ayil – a mature male sheep, a different word for a different animal. An ayil is not a seh. Something was provided, and Isaac was spared, and the thing provided was not the thing named.
Abraham then names the place in Genesis 22:14 with a line that faces forward rather than back – “in the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.” The grammar is future. The word seh was spoken on that mountain and then left standing, unclaimed, for the rest of the Hebrew Bible.
Which is why it matters that the next person to point at a seh and say “there it is” is John the Baptist. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He is speaking Greek, and the Greek word is amnos – but the sentence shape is Abraham’s answer finally arriving as a fact instead of a hope. Isaac asked where. John points.
There is one more thread worth pulling, and you can see it in an English Bible without knowing a word of Hebrew. Isaiah 53:7 has the sufferer brought “as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers.” The first animal is seh; the second is rachel, an ewe – which is exactly why the KJV says “her shearers” and not “his.” Now turn to Acts 8:32, where an Ethiopian official is reading that very verse aloud in a chariot: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer.” The two animals have swapped places. He was reading the Greek translation, which orders them the other way round. And the question he asks Philip next is Isaac’s question in a different key: “of whom speaketh the prophet this?” (Acts 8:34).
Not All “Lamb” Words Are the Same
English flattens half a dozen Hebrew and Greek words into “lamb.” These are the ones worth telling apart:
- Seh (שֶׂה, H7716) – one of the flock. No species, no age. The Passover word, Isaiah’s word, Isaac’s word.
- Keves (כֶּבֶשׂ, H3532) and keseb (כֶּשֶׂב, H3775) – a young male lamb. Two spellings of the same three letters in swapped order, both in regular use. This is the word of the daily sacrifice: “two lambs of the first year day by day continually” (Exodus 29:38), and the word in Isaiah 11:6, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.”
- Kivsah (כִּבְשָׂה, H3535) – an ewe lamb. The feminine form, and the word in Nathan’s parable: “the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb” (2 Samuel 12:3). The femininity is part of the sting.
- Taleh (טָלֶה, H2924) – a lamb still nursing. “And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD” (1 Samuel 7:9). Also the lamb of Isaiah 65:25, “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together” – a different word from the famous wolf-and-lamb line in Isaiah 11:6.
- Ayil (אַיִל, H352) – a ram. The animal actually caught in the thicket in Genesis 22:13.
- Tso’n (צֹאן, H6629) – the flock. Sheep and goats as a mass. The word seh is defined against this one.
- Amnos and arnion – the two Greek words. Amnos is the sacrificial lamb of John 1:29. Arnion is a little lamb, and it is the word Revelation uses almost thirty times – “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). The book that ends the Bible calls Jesus by a diminutive.
Why the Original Word Changes the Meaning
In English, “lamb” means a baby sheep, and almost all of its emotional weight is softness – woolly, small, harmless. That is a real association, but it is ours, not the Hebrew’s. Seh carries neither babyhood nor species. What it carries is singularity and selection. One, out of many. This one, not those.
Read “Lamb of God” with that in the ear and the phrase stops being mainly about gentleness and starts being about being chosen out. Not one of the flock in general – the one taken from it, examined for blemish, kept four days in the house, and named by a father on a mountain long before anybody could point at him.
It also quietly corrects a picture most of us carry of the first Passover. We imagine a lamb because our translations say lamb; the text says take one from the sheep or from the goats. What God specified was not the species and not the cuteness. It was without blemish, one per house, and chosen four days early. The instruction was about care and particularity, not about a sentimental animal.
Living It Out
The hardest part of Exodus 12 is not the fourteenth day. It is the ten days before it – choosing the seh early and then living with it. Something true about faith sits in that gap: the costly thing is usually named long before it is finished, and you have to keep walking with it in the meantime, the way Abraham and Isaac “went both of them together” after a question neither of them could answer yet.
This week, try naming one thing you are carrying that has not resolved. Not solving it – naming it. Then put Genesis 22:14 beside it: “in the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.” Abraham said that while still on the mountain, not after he got down.
Journal Prompts
- Isaac asked, “where is the lamb?” and got an answer that would not be fulfilled in his lifetime. What is the question you are currently asking God that has only been answered with a promise so far – and how are you holding that promise?
- Seh means one taken out of the flock rather than the flock itself. Write about a time you were singled out – chosen, or exposed, or simply seen as an individual. What did that do to you, and how does it change the phrase “Lamb of God”?
- The Passover seh was chosen on the tenth day and not killed until the fourteenth. Where in your own life is there a gap right now between something being named and something being finished? What would faithfulness look like inside that gap, rather than at the end of it?
Prayer
Lord, Isaac asked where the seh was, and Abraham answered that You would provide it, and then they walked on together with the question still open. I have open questions too. Thank You that the answer to Isaac’s was not a trick or a silence, only a long wait – and that in Jesus the thing named on that mountain finally stood where we could see it. When I am in the gap between the promise and the provision, keep me walking, and keep me together with the people walking beside me. Teach me to trust a God who sees before I do. Amen.
Share This
- The Hebrew word for “lamb” is seh – and it doesn’t name a species at all. Exodus 12:5 says the Passover lamb could be taken “out from the sheep, or from the goats.” Seh means the single one, chosen out of the flock. [Post URL]
- In Genesis 22, Isaac asks “where is the lamb?” – seh. Abraham says God will provide one. Then verse 13 provides a ram, a completely different Hebrew word. The lamb Abraham named stayed unclaimed until John 1:29. [Post URL]
FAQ
Does the Hebrew word for lamb mean a baby sheep?
No. Seh (שֶׂה, Strong’s H7716) means a single animal taken from a flock, without specifying species or age. Hebrew has separate words when a young animal is actually meant – keves for a male lamb, kivsah for an ewe lamb, and taleh for one still nursing.
Was the Passover lamb a sheep or a goat?
Either was permitted. Exodus 12:5 says, “ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats.” The requirements God gave were that the animal be without blemish, a male of the first year, one per household, and chosen on the tenth day of the month – not that it be a sheep.
Is “seh” the word used in Isaiah 53:7?
Yes. “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter” uses seh, while the second animal in the same verse, “as a sheep before her shearers,” is rachel, an ewe – which is why the KJV reads “her shearers.” It is one of the few places where seh describes a person rather than an animal.
Why does Abraham say “a lamb” but God provides a ram?
Because they are two different Hebrew words. Genesis 22:8 uses seh; Genesis 22:13 uses ayil, a mature ram. The ram spared Isaac that day, but the seh Abraham named was not what appeared in the thicket. Many readers take John 1:29 – “Behold the Lamb of God” – as the point where that word is finally answered.
