Hebrew keeps two knives where English keeps one. Karat is the covenant knife. Gazar is the severance knife: to cut a thing in two, to cut it away, and in later Hebrew to hand down a decree, a gezerah. It is Shlomo's sword over the disputed child, "divide it" (1 Kings 3:25). It is a word for what death does.

The KJV, ESV, NASB, and NIV render both roots "cut off," and a wire that runs through the Tanakh goes dark. The English reader cannot see that three of Scripture's darkest self-descriptions share this one verb, because the translations have melted it into the other knife.

Listen to the three. The dry bones: "our hope is lost; nigzarnu lanu, we are cut off" (Ezekiel 37:11). The Servant: "nigzar from the land of the living" (Isaiah 53:8). The man under the closing waters: "waters flowed over my head; I said, nigzarti, I am cut off" (Lamentations 3:54). Bones, Servant, drowning man, one verb, and every one of those sentences is answered in Scripture by a coming up. What gazar severs, HaShem raises.