rich abundance: plentiful, satisfying good food and overflowing provision
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This word grows out of the idea of being fat, and in the Hebrew Bible fat stood for richness and plenty rather than for excess body weight. So it pictures abundance at its most satisfying: a table piled with good food, land soaked with produce, the overflowing goodness God pours out on his people.
The two shades belong together. Sometimes it is the rich fare a person feasts on and is filled by, the satisfying plenty of a laden table. Other times it is the richness the earth and its plants yield, the abundance the ground drips with or the oil an olive tree gives. Either way the picture is the same: life made rich and full.
Nuances
1arich, satisfying food; the plentiful fare a person feasts on and is filled by
Job 36:16Psa 36:8(9)Psa 63:5(6)Isa 55:2Jer 31:14
1bthe rich yield the earth and its plants pour out, such as the olive's oil
Jdg 9:9Psa 65:11(12)
2
the greasy ashes of the offerings: the fat-soaked ash left when a sacrifice has burned, gathered from the altar and carried away
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
When an animal offering burned on the altar, what remained was not ordinary ash but ash soaked with the melted fat of the sacrifice. That is what this word names here: the greasy, fatty ashes of worship. It is the same root idea as the word's other meaning, since fat is exactly what makes these ashes what they are.
The priestly instructions handle these ashes with care. They are lifted from the altar and set beside it, then carried in clean garments to a clean place outside the camp. The same word also names the ash poured out when an altar was torn apart as a sign, and the valley outside Jerusalem where the fatty ash and refuse of the sacrifices were dumped.
Lev 1:16Lev 4:12 (2×)Lev 6:10(3)Lev 6:11(4)1Ki 13:31Ki 13:5Jer 31:40
In Hebrew this names specifically the fat-soaked ash of the sacrifices, not ash in general.Lev 6:101Ki 13:5
Both
Both name what is left behind after something has burned.Lev 4:12
Only ashes
English "ashes" suggests any burnt residue, including ordinary fire ash or the ash of mourning, losing the link to sacrificial fat.
“abundance”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“rich food”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How deshen differs from similar Hebrew words
דָּשֵׁןThe verb of this family: to grow fat, thrive, or be made prosperous, where this noun is the fatness or abundance itself.
דָּשֵׁןThe adjective fat or well-fed, describing a person or thing as rich and thriving, where this noun names that richness itself.
חֵלֶבThe literal fat of an animal, and by extension the best or richest part; this word is the abundance, or the fat-soaked ash, that such fat produces.
Names the greasy ash left after the altar fat has burned away, the fatty residue lifted off the altar and carried outside the camp.Lev 1:16Lev 6:101Ki 13:3
Reaches beyond any animal to fatness as a general picture of rich abundance: well-watered ground, satisfying food, the yield of tree and field.Psa 65:11Isa 55:2Jdg 9:9
Both
Both name fatness as the image of the richest, most satisfying nourishment, the kind of feast that fills the soul.Psa 63:5
Both stretch from literal fat to the best and richest of what land or table yields, a figure for choice abundance.Psa 36:8Gen 45:18
A technical priestly term for the fatty ash residue of the burnt offering, which the priest must remove from the altar and carry outside the camp.Lev 4:12Lev 6:10Lev 6:11
Unlike the mournful associations of ordinary ashes, this word also carries a positive sense of fatness, richness, or abundance, describing rich food or overflowing blessing.Psa 36:8Psa 63:5Isa 55:2Jdg 9:9
Both
Both appear in priestly legislation naming a literal ash residue tied to a sacrifice: one names the ashes of the burned red heifer used in the purification water, the other the fatty ash of the burnt offering cleared from the altar.Num 19:9Lev 6:10
The ordinary word for ashes used as a gesture of mourning and self-abasement: sitting in it, wearing it with sackcloth, or rolling in it.Job 2:8Est 4:3Jer 6:26
Pictures human insignificance and mortality before God, paired with dust to describe what a person amounts to.Gen 18:27Job 42:6
Names the specific ashes of the burned red heifer, mixed with water for the ritual that purifies from corpse contamination.Num 19:9Num 19:10
Can picture total destruction under judgment, something or someone burned down to nothing or trampled underfoot.Ezk 28:18Mal 4:3
Only this word names the greasy ash left behind once an offering has burned down, a real substance the priests scoop off the altar and carry outside the camp to a clean place.Lev 1:16Lev 4:12Lev 6:101Ki 13:3
Only this word stands for the richness God himself pours out on his people so that they are filled and content, a gift received rather than an asset owned.Psa 36:8Isa 55:2Jer 31:14
Only this word names the rich oil a tree yields, the produce it hands over rather than the soil it grew in.Jdg 9:9
Both
Both name rich, fatty food on the table, the kind of eating that marks a person as full and glad rather than scraping by.Job 36:16Psa 63:5Neh 8:10
Both can carry the productive richness of farmland, the plenty a place gives back when it is watered and fertile.Psa 65:11Gen 27:28
Only this word describes people's own well fed bodies, the sturdy and comfortable who are picked out to be struck down or wasted away.Psa 78:31Isa 10:16Isa 17:4
Only this word names rich country as a place on the map, the choice districts a person lives in or an invader marches into and strips.Gen 27:39Dan 11:24
דֶּשֶׁן alone names the greasy residue that remains on the altar after a burnt offering is consumed: the fatty ash collected by the priest and carried outside the camp. It is the physical trace of sacrifice, not any usable substance.Lev 6:10
דֶּשֶׁן is used as the pure abstract noun for richness or fatness as a quality (the lushness of a feast, the fullness of YHWH's provision) without reference to any particular fatty substance. שֶׁמֶן never functions this way; it always names the concrete liquid.Psa 63:5
Both
Both words serve as images of YHWH's lavish provision and blessing: the richness that flows from his hand over a people or a land. In this figurative use the two words are close: whether the poet reaches for the abstract noun of fatness or the concrete noun of oil, the picture is the same overflowing goodness of God.Psa 65:11Deu 32:13
שֶׁמֶן is the actual pressed oil: the liquid poured into lamps, mixed into grain offerings, rubbed on the body, and used for royal or priestly anointing. It names a specific, pourable substance with precise ritual and economic roles. דֶּשֶׁן never refers to the usable oil product itself.Lev 2:1
שֶׁמֶן alone is used for the dedicated holy anointing compound and for the sacred lamp oil: substances with exact priestly prescriptions, quantities, and grades. The word's concreteness makes it the right term for any regulated or measured use of oil.Exo 30:25
deshen in the other biblical languages
πιότηςGreek“richness”The Greek word for richness or fatness, used of the rich sap of the olive root, close to this word's abundance meaning.
The greasy ash left on the altar once the fat of an offering has burned away, gathered up and carried outside the camp to a clean place, or poured out when an altar is broken.Lev 1:16Lev 4:12Lev 6:101Ki 13:5
Lavish fare that fills and satisfies the appetite: a table heaped with plenty, the soul filled as with the richest food.Job 36:16Isa 55:2Jer 31:14
The overflowing abundance of a fertile land and of God's own house, blessing poured out until it drips.Psa 36:8Psa 65:11
Both
Both use the image of fatness for the rich, oil-bearing life of the olive tree: its glory and the gift it yields.Jdg 9:9Rom 11:17
Both name a life-giving richness that nourishes and satisfies those who partake of it, filling them from a source beyond themselves.Psa 63:5Rom 11:17
Names the richness of a root that is not one's own by birth: the sustaining sap a grafted branch draws once it is joined to a stock outside its native kind, a picture of outsiders brought in to share another's blessing.Rom 11:17
σποδόςGreek“ashes”The ordinary Greek word for ashes; it matches the altar-ash meaning but not the fattiness this word carries.
names specifically the greasy ash left on the altar after the fat and flesh of a sacrifice have burned away, which the priest carries outside the campLev 1:16Lev 4:12Lev 6:10Lev 6:111Ki 13:31Ki 13:5
carries a second, wholly unrelated meaning that the Greek word never has: rich abundance, fatness, and plenty, the good things that satisfyJob 36:16Psa 36:8Psa 63:5Jer 31:14
Both
both name ash as the residue left behind after something has been consumed by fireLev 1:16Heb 9:13
names the ashes of mourning and repentance, the dust a grieving or penitent person sits in or scatters over the headMat 11:21Luk 10:13
is the ordinary, everyday word for ash with no cultic specialization, so it can name the ash of a burnt heifer used to purify the ceremonially uncleanHeb 9:13
What scholars say about deshen
דֶּשֶׁן is a noun from the root דשׁן "to be fat." The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB, DCH) treat it as a single word with two related applications. The first is "fatness, abundance," figurative for rich food, satisfaction, and the overflowing bounty of divine provision (Job 36:16;Ps 36:8; 63:5; 65:11; Isa 55:2;Jer 31:14; and, of the olive's own rich oil, Judg 9:9). The second is "fat ashes," a technical cultic term for the ash of the burnt offerings saturated with the melted fat of the victims, the residue lifted from the altar and carried outside the camp (Lev 1:16; 4:12; 6:10-11), and by extension the ash poured from a shattered altar (1 Kgs 13:3, 5) and the ash-refuse tip in the Kidron valley (Jer 31:40). The unifying element is fat: the ashes are "fatty" precisely because they are steeped in the offerings' fat, which is why scholarship reads the term as one polysemous word rather than two homonyms. The cognate verb דָּשֵׁן and adjective דָּשֵׁן belong to the same root.