Lexicon

H0977 - bachar

Strong's: H0977 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: baw-khar' Part of speech: verb Root: a primitive root OT occurrences: 164 verses in the Strong's-tagged KJV, with 172 tags. The KJV word carrying the tag is "chosen" 77 times, "choose" 50, "chose" 22, "choice" 6, "out" 5, "chooseth" 3, "choosest" 2, with single renderings including "appoint", "require", "acceptable" and "excellent" (measured) Related words: bachir (H0972), "chosen one, elect", the noun of Isaiah 42:1; in the New Testament, eklegomai (G1586, 19 verses) and eklektos (G1588, 23 verses) carry the same idea (measured)

Bachar is the ordinary Hebrew verb to choose: to look over the options and take one. It is the word for Lot picking the well-watered plain, and it is the word for God choosing Israel. The same verb also carries Joshua's "choose you this day whom ye will serve" and Moses' "choose life". The Old Testament doctrine of election, and the human responsibility set beside it, are both written with this one verb.

Semantic range

Human choosing, ordinary. "So Lot chose him all the Plain of the Jordan" (Genesis 13:11); Moses telling Joshua to choose men to fight Amalek (Exodus 17:9). A deliberate selection from among alternatives.
Choosing a way of life before God. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve" (Joshua 24:15); "therefore choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19); the scoffers "did not choose the fear of Jehovah" (Proverbs 1:29); the child of Immanuel "knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good" (Isaiah 7:15).
"Chosen" as "choice, the best". Pharaoh's "six hundred chosen chariots" (Exodus 14:7); "knowledge rather than choice gold" (Proverbs 8:10). The picked thing is the excellent thing.
God's choosing. The largest theological use. God chooses Abram ("who didst choose Abram", Nehemiah 9:7), Israel (Deuteronomy 7:6), the place for his name (Deuteronomy 12:5), the priestly tribe (Deuteronomy 18:5), the king ("See ye him whom Jehovah hath chosen", 1 Samuel 10:24), and David: "He chose David also his servant, And took him from the sheepfolds" (Psalm 78:70). The negative is as telling as the positive: as Jesse's sons pass, "Neither hath Jehovah chosen this" (1 Samuel 16:8; see 1 Samuel 16:7).

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Deuteronomy 7: why Israel was chosen

The classic statement of Israel's election uses the verb twice in two verses:

For thou art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God: Jehovah thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth.

Jehovah did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples:

but because Jehovah loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he sware unto your fathers, hath Jehovah brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8, ASV)

The passage closes off every ground for the choice that lies in Israel. Not size: "ye were the fewest of all peoples". The reason given is God's love and his oath to the fathers, which is to say the reason lies in God. Deuteronomy says the same thing earlier: "because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them" (Deuteronomy 4:37). It repeats the formula of 7:6 almost word for word at 14:2.

Three features of the Old Testament's election language follow from this and recur through the canon:

Election is grounded in love, not merit. That is the explicit argument of Deuteronomy 7:6-8. Two chapters later Moses says the same of the land: "Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart, dost thou go in to possess their land" (Deuteronomy 9:5).
Election is for a purpose. "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me" (Isaiah 43:10). The servant chosen to raise up Jacob is also given "for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6). Israel is chosen to carry the knowledge of God to the nations, as Abraham was told all families of the earth would be blessed in him (Genesis 12:3).
Election survives judgment. "I have chosen thee and not cast thee away" (Isaiah 41:9); "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" (Isaiah 48:10); "Jehovah will have compassion on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel... and the sojourner shall join himself with them" (Isaiah 14:1). Even this promise of renewed choosing makes room for the outsider.

Joshua 24 and Deuteronomy 30: the people choose

The verb that describes God choosing Israel also describes Israel choosing God.

And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah. (Joshua 24:15, ASV)

When the people answer, Joshua holds them to it with the same verb: "Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you Jehovah, to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses" (Joshua 24:22). Moses had set the same choice before the people in Moab: "I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed" (Deuteronomy 30:19).

So Deuteronomy, the book that most insists that God chose Israel for reasons in himself, also calls on Israel to choose. The Old Testament does not resolve these two uses of bachar into a system; it holds both and expects the reader to hold both. Christian theology has argued ever since over how they fit together. See Free Will and Determinism, Predestination, and the survey in Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism.

From Israel to the church

The election vocabulary passes into the New Testament with the same shape. "Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit" (John 15:16); "even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy" (Ephesians 1:4). Peter applies Israel's titles to the church: "ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession" (1 Peter 2:9), echoing Exodus 19:5-6 and the "people for his own possession" of Deuteronomy 7:6. As in Deuteronomy, election is for holiness and witness, not for privilege. See Israel and the Church and Romans 9.

Where the word decides a debate

"A chosen people is ethnic favouritism." Deuteronomy rules out the reasons the objection assumes. Israel was not chosen for size, strength or righteousness (Deuteronomy 7:7), but out of love and for a mission to the nations (Isaiah 49:6; Genesis 12:3). Being chosen brought a stricter accountability with it, not an exemption.
"Election means ethnicity guarantees salvation." Some Hebrew Israelite teachers treat being chosen as a matter of bloodline. But the same chapters that announce Israel's election also make room for the sojourner (Isaiah 14:1) and require the people themselves to choose (Joshua 24:15). See Hebrew Israelites and Gentiles Cannot Be Saved Objection Defeater.
"Divine election makes human choice an illusion." The Old Testament uses the very same verb for both, often in the same book. Whatever account one gives of how they relate, the text does not drop either one. See Libertarian Free Will and Divine Sovereignty.

Notable verses

God chooses

Deuteronomy 7:6-8, chosen out of love, not number
Deuteronomy 4:37 and 14:2, the same formula
Deuteronomy 12:5, the place God will choose
Psalm 33:12, "The people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance"
Psalm 78:68-70, Judah, Zion and David
Isaiah 41:8-9, "Jacob whom I have chosen"
Isaiah 43:10, chosen to be witnesses
Isaiah 44:1, "Israel, who I have chosen"
Isaiah 14:1, "will yet choose Israel"
Nehemiah 9:7, "who didst choose Abram"

People choose

Joshua 24:15, "choose you this day"
Deuteronomy 30:19, "choose life"
Proverbs 1:29, did not choose the fear of Jehovah
Genesis 13:11, Lot chose the plain

The chosen one

Isaiah 42:1, "my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth" (bachir)

Patristic note

The Fathers who comment on "choose life" read it in two directions, which mirrors the later debate.

Clement of Alexandria stresses the reality of the choice: "God says that He set, not that He made both, in order to the comparison of choice" (ANF 2, PDF p. 424).
Irenaeus quotes "Choose life, that thou mayest live" as part of the law's preparation of man for friendship with God (Against Heresies, ANF 1, PDF p. 387).
Augustine, against the Pelagians, objects to reading the command as proof of unaided ability, "as if, forsooth, this very admonition did not come from God's mercy, or as if there were any advantage in choosing life, unless God inspired love to make such a choice" (anti-Pelagian writings, NPNF1 5, PDF p. 136).