StrongerBible

massah

מַסָּה

HebrewH4531“trial, testing, ...”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Deu 4:34Deu 7:19Deu 29:3(2)Job 9:23
Root family
Word studymahs-SAHnoun

What massah means

1

a testing, a trial: an ordeal that forces out into the open what someone or something is really made of

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

Deuteronomy uses this noun only in the plural, and only in one spot in the story: Moses reminding a new generation what God did to get them out of Egypt. "By testings, by signs and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm" (Deuteronomy 4:34). The plagues are being filed under a heading here. They were not random disasters. They were ordeals that forced the question of who actually held power in Egypt.

The word is built on the verb "to put to the test" (נָסָה). A testing in this sense is not a written exam. It is a situation deliberately created so that whatever is really there has to show itself, and in Egypt what showed itself was Pharaoh's stubbornness and the emptiness of the gods behind him, one blow at a time, while Israel watched.

The same idea produced a place name. When Israel quarreled with God over water in the desert, the spot was called Massah (מַסָּה), meaning "Testing", because there the people put God to the test instead (Exodus 17:7). The noun runs in both directions: God tests people, and people test God.

Deu 4:34Deu 7:19Deu 29:3(2)
2

despair: hope draining away until a person has no courage left

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyContested

This is almost certainly a second word that happens to be spelled the same way. It turns up once, in Job 9:23, in one of Job's angriest lines: when a sudden disaster kills, God, he says, only mocks.

The usual judgment traces the word here to the verb for melting or wasting away (מָסַס), the picture of courage turning to water inside a person. On that reading Job is charging God with laughing while blameless people lose all hope, which is the harshest thing he has said so far.

Other readers keep the word with the Deuteronomy noun and take it as the ordeal itself, which gives "he mocks at the calamity of the innocent." The accusation lands the same way by either route: the innocent are destroyed and heaven appears to be amused. English versions divide here, so the wording you see depends on the choice your translation made.

Job 9:23

What scholars say about massah

The standard lexica split this spelling into two homonymous nouns. BDB, HALOT, and DCH each list מַסָּה I "despair," attested only at Job 9:23 and derived from מסס "to melt, dissolve," alongside מַסָּה II "test, trial," a nominal derivative of נסה attested at Deut 4:34; 7:19; 29:3 (Hebrew 29:2) and standing behind the toponym מַסָּה (Exod 17:7; Deut 6:16; 9:22; 33:8; Ps 95:8). In Deuteronomy the plural is fixed inside the stereotyped exodus recital alongside אֹתוֹת and מוֹפְתִים, so the מַסֹּת are the plagues construed as probative ordeals inflicted on Egypt rather than as tests of Israel. Helfmeyer (TDOT 9) and Brensinger (NIDOTTE 3) both place the noun within the נסה field, where בָּחַן examines an existing condition and צָרַף refines by smelting while נסה contrives a trial to elicit a response; Licht's monograph remains the standard treatment of the testing theme. Job 9:23 is a recognized crux in the critical commentaries on Job: the מסס derivation yields "despair" (so NIV, NASB), while taking the form with מַסָּה II yields "calamity, ordeal" (so ESV, NRSV) or the older "trial" (KJV). The Septuagint renders the Deuteronomic plural with πειρασμός, the noun that carries this Hebrew testing vocabulary into the New Testament, where it also picks up the sense of enticement to sin.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1906), s.v. מַסָּהlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. מַסָּהlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 5 (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), s.v. מַסָּהlexicon
  • F. J. Helfmeyer, נָסָה nāsâ, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 9 (Eerdmans, 1998), 443-461theological-dictionary
  • Terry L. Brensinger, נסה (nsh) #5814, in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, vol. 3 (Zondervan, 1997), 111-113theological-dictionary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Word, 1989)commentary
  • Jacob Licht, Testing in the Hebrew Scriptures (Magnes, 1973)monograph

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

All attested forms of מַסָּה

f p absolute

מַּסּוֹת, מַסֹּת, מַּסֹּת

Deu 29:3, Deu 4:34, Deu 7:19

f s construct

מַסַּת

Job 9:23