StrongerBible

mesav

מֵסַב

HebrewH4524“round about, table, ...”

Appears 5 times · tap a cell to see the verses

1Ki 6:292Ki 23:5Job 37:12Psa 140:9(10)Sng 1:12
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademay-SAHVnoun

What mesav means

what lies round about something: the ground, the objects, or the people encircling it

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is a rare Hebrew noun built from the everyday verb for turning and going around. Its shape is the kind Hebrew uses to name a place or a thing, so it means roughly "whatever encircles something else." Only five verses use it, and in each one the encircling is the point, though what does the encircling changes.

What the word names across those verses:

  • the outlying settlements ringing a city, its outskirts
  • carving that runs the whole way around a room's walls
  • storm clouds wheeling off in every direction
  • a pack of enemies closing in around one man
  • the place a king occupies at a feast, ringed by his guests

For the plain idea of "all around," Hebrew normally reaches for a far more common word (סָבִיב), which 1 Kings 6 itself uses a few verses before it switches to this rarer noun. In the temple description, then, this word is a stylistic alternative and not a different concept.

The last item in that list, Song of Songs 1:12, is the famous verse and the hard one: "while the king was in his mesav, my nard gave forth its fragrance." English Bibles split three ways, rendering it "at his table," "on his couch," or "in his circle." All three assume a feast and all three keep the idea of something encircling; they differ over whether the word names the furniture or the people. The Song pointedly does not use the ordinary Hebrew word for a table (שֻׁלְחָן), which is part of why the scene stays open.

Nuances

1athe outlying districts ringing a city; its outskirts
TranslatabilityDirect
2Ki 23:5
1ball around, on every side
TranslatabilityDirect
1Ki 6:29Job 37:12
1cthe ring of people closing in around someone
TranslatabilityApproximate
Psa 140:9(10)
1dthe place a host occupies at a feast, with his company around him
CertaintyContested
Sng 1:12
Sng 1:12

What the word names in Song of Songs 1:12: the round table, the reclining couch, or the company of guests encircling the king.

  • contestedThe round table that the diners sit around, so that the king is seated at his table.; Heinrich Ewald and Franz Delitzsch, as cited in BDB, s.v. מֵסַב
  • contestedA low couch or divan on which banqueters reclined, matching the reclining sense the word carries in later Hebrew and the reading already reflected in the ancient Greek and Latin translations.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 347
  • contestedThe circle of banqueters around the king, which keeps the encircling sense most literally.; Menahem Zevi Kaddari, A Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006), s.v. מֵסַב

What scholars say about mesav

The noun is a mem-preformative formation on the root סבב, a pattern that typically yields nouns of place or instrument, hence "that which surrounds." BDB keeps a single headword, glossing it "that which surrounds, or is round," with subentries for the plural "surrounding places" (2 Kings 23:5), the adverbial use (1 Kings 6:29), and the feminine plural "on all sides, in all directions" (Job 37:12), while flagging Song 1:12 as dubious and listing the competing proposals there: "round table" (Ewald, Delitzsch) against "cushion, divan" (Baethgen, Kautzsch), with a cross-reference to Budde. BDB also refers Psalm 140:10 (English 140:9) to the verb rather than the noun, so on that analysis only four occurrences are nominal and one of those is contested. Pope (Anchor Bible 7C, 347) argued that Song 1:12 names a low couch or divan on which banqueters reclined, tying the word to post-biblical מְסִבָּה, which he read as the equivalent of the Greek symposion, and to the West Semitic marzeah known from Ugaritic (KTU 1.114), Amos 6:7, and Jeremiah 16:5; Kaddari glosses the phrase "at his circle." The reclining sense is securely attested in Ben Sira and in Mishnaic Hebrew (מְסֻבִּין, הֲסָבָה) and is codified in the Passover Seder, but retrojecting it into Song 1:12 presupposes a Hellenistic date for the Song, which is the majority linguistic judgment though not unanimous. The Septuagint's ἐν ἀνακλίσει and the Vulgate's accubitus show that the reclining reading is nonetheless ancient. Comparative claims need care: Akkadian sabābu means "flare, blow," not "turn," and the genuine Akkadian semantic parallel saḫāru belongs to a different root; Ugaritic sbb and Arabic s-b-b are thin, while the substantial comparative dossier is the Jewish Aramaic and Mishnaic reclining vocabulary together with the Ugaritic marzeah texts. The precise entries in HALOT (vol. 2) and DCH (vol. 5), including whether HALOT posits a separate table-circle sense, should be checked in print.

Where scholars disagree about mesav

Whether this is one word with a single core sense applied to different objects, or whether the banquet usage represents a separately established sense.

  • majorityOne word throughout, meaning what surrounds something. Every rendering, from the outskirts of a city to a king's place at a feast, is that one sense applied to a different object, so the glosses are contextual rather than separate words.; Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. מֵסַב; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), s.v. מֵסַב
  • minorityThe banquet usage is a distinct, lexicalized sense: the low couch on which diners reclined, a meaning the word demonstrably carries in later Hebrew and which should be recognized already in the Song of Songs.; Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 347
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

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. מֵסַבlexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and J. J. Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 2, s.v. מֵסַבlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), s.v. מֵסַבlexicon
  • Menahem Zevi Kaddari, A Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006), s.v. מֵסַבlexicon
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7C (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 347commentary
  • Othmar Keel, The Song of Songs: A Continental Commentary, trans. Frederick J. Gaiser (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), on 1:12commentary
  • Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990)commentary
  • Mordechai Cogan, 1 Kings, Anchor Bible 10 (New York: Doubleday, 2001)commentary
  • Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), on Ezekiel 41:5-11commentary
  • John L. McLaughlin, The Marzeah in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the Extra-Biblical Evidence, VTSup 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2001)monograph
  • Theodore J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit, Harvard Semitic Monographs 39 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 94monograph
  • Jonas C. Greenfield, "The Marzeah as a Social Institution," Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 22 (1974): 451-55journal-article
  • Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (New York: Random House, 1995)translation

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

All attested forms of מֵסַב

f p absolute

מְסִבּוֹת

Job 37:12

m p construct

מְסִבֵּי

2Ki 23:5

m p construct

מְסִבָּי

Psa 140:9

m s absolute

מֵסַב

1Ki 6:29

m s construct

מְסִבּוֹ

Sng 1:12