first time the word appears in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 19:19), Lot is asking God whether he can flee to Zoar instead of to the mountains. He has no right to expect that God will grant this indulgence but in his desperation he asks, and God in his kindness allows it. In Exodus, where the word occurs only four times, it leaps ahead in meaning and is used by God himself to describe his character. This demonstrates the fact that word meaning is not a simple matter of growth over time. In the vast majority