StrongerBible

mosha'ah

מוֹשָׁעָה

HebrewH4190“salvation, deliverance, ...”

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Psa 68:20(21)
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademoh-shah-AHnoun

What mosha'ah means

deliverances: God's saving acts, named in the plural because rescuing people is something he does again and again

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word turns up only once in the whole Hebrew Bible, in Psalm 68:20, where the singer calls God "a God of deliverances." It belongs to a family of salvation words built on one Hebrew verb meaning to come to the aid of someone in danger, and it is by far the rarest of them. The two common nouns of that family, salvation (יְשׁוּעָה) and rescue (יֵשַׁע), cover the same ground; this is a heavier, less usual way of saying it.

What sets it apart is the plural. Hebrew often puts an idea in the plural to make it full or repeated rather than to count separate items, and that is what is happening here. The psalm is not tallying up a fixed number of rescues. It is saying that saving is simply what this God does, day after day, and the very next line keeps the thought concrete: getting out from death belongs to him.

The rescue in view is ordinary and physical rather than inward or spiritual. Across the Old Testament this family of words covers things like:

  • winning a battle against an invading army
  • being cleared when someone is falsely accused
  • being pulled out of danger that would otherwise kill

Being saved from sin is where the family of words eventually arrives, but it arrives late, mostly after the Old Testament, and it is not what Psalm 68 is describing.

Psa 68:20(21)

What scholars say about mosha'ah

מוֹשָׁעָה is a hapax legomenon, attested only in the plural לְמוֹשָׁעוֹת at Psalm 68:21 MT (68:20 in English versions), in the divine epithet הָאֵל לָנוּ אֵל לְמוֹשָׁעוֹת. Formally it is a mem-preformative feminine noun from the root ישע, standing beside the far commoner derivatives יְשׁוּעָה (about 78×), יֵשַׁע (about 36×) and תְּשׁוּעָה (about 34×), and the participial מוֹשִׁיעַ. BDB glosses it "saving acts"; HALOT and DCH give "acts of salvation, help." The plural is generally read as abstract or intensive rather than as an enumeration of discrete deliverances (so GKC §124), yielding an epithet that characterizes YHWH as the God whose nature is to deliver; the parallel colon, לַמָּוֶת תּוֹצָאוֹת ("escapes belonging to death"), holds the reference concrete rather than soteriological. On the root itself, Sawyer (TDOT 6) and Stolz (TLOT) take the base sense to be bringing help or assistance to someone in danger, distress or legal jeopardy, deployed across military, forensic and royal contexts; the Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database, with the eighteenth edition of Gesenius, treats the older derivation from Arabic wasiʿa "be spacious" (still printed in BDB, TWOT and Hubbard's NIDOTTE) as disproven on both phonological and semantic grounds. Psalm 68 is textually among the most difficult chapters in the Psalter, but this colon is not in serious doubt and no emendation of מוֹשָׁעוֹת has gained currency.

Where scholars disagree about mosha'ah

What the root behind this noun originally pictured, and therefore how its meaning should be explained.

  • majorityThe root means bringing help or assistance to someone in danger, distress or legal trouble, with no underlying image of "wideness"; the older derivation from an Arabic word meaning "be spacious" is set aside on phonological and semantic grounds.; J.F.A. Sawyer, "ישׁע yāšaʿ," TDOT 6 (1990); F. Stolz, "ישׁע yšʿ to help," TLOT 2; Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database, s.v. ישׁע
  • minorityThe root's underlying idea is spaciousness, being brought into a broad and open place, from which the sense of deliverance follows.; BDB, s.v. יֵשַׁע; J.E. Hartley, "ישׁע," TWOT; R.L. Hubbard, "ישׁע," NIDOTTE 2
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, s.v. מוֹשָׁעָהlexicon
  • HALOT, s.v. מוֹשָׁעָהlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. מוֹשָׁעָהlexicon
  • J.F.A. Sawyer, "ישׁע yāšaʿ," TDOT 6 (1990)theological-dictionary
  • F. Stolz, "ישׁע yšʿ to help," TLOT 2theological-dictionary
  • J.F.A. Sawyer, Semantics in Biblical Research (SBT 24; London: SCM, 1972)monograph
  • R.L. Hubbard, "ישׁע," NIDOTTE 2theological-dictionary
  • J.E. Hartley, "ישׁע," TWOTtheological-dictionary
  • Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database, s.v. ישׁעdatabase
  • Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch, rev. A.E. Cowley (2nd Eng. ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1910), §124grammar
  • H.-J. Kraus, Psalms 60-150 (Continental Commentary; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of מוֹשָׁעָה

f p absolute

לְמוֹשָׁעוֹת

Psa 68:20