StrongerBible

mera'ashah

מְרַאֲשָׁוֹת

HebrewH4763“pillow, at his head, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 28:11Gen 28:181Sa 19:131Sa 19:161Sa 26:71Sa 26:111Sa 26:161Ki 19:6
Akin to
Word studymeh-rah-uh-SHOTEnoun

What mera'ashah means

the spot at the head of someone lying down: the place where a sleeper's head is, and where a thing is laid or set within reach

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

This is a place word rather than a word for an object. It is built from the ordinary Hebrew word for a head (רֹאשׁ), and it points to the spot at the head of someone who is lying down: the head end of a bed, or the patch of ground where a sleeper's head rests. What is sitting in that spot changes from scene to scene, and the word itself does not tell us.

All eight uses come in scenes of someone asleep, and in each one the writer needs to say where something is:

  • Jacob sets a stone at this spot before sleeping at Bethel, then takes that same stone in the morning and stands it up as a pillar (Genesis 28:11, 28:18)
  • Michal arranges a household image in David's bed with a goats' hair bundle at its head, so the men sent to arrest him see what looks like a sleeping body (1 Samuel 19:13, 19:16)
  • Saul sleeps in the middle of his camp with his spear driven into the ground at this spot and a water jug beside it (1 Samuel 26:7, 26:11, 26:16)
  • An exhausted Elijah wakes under a desert bush to find bread and a water jug waiting at this spot (1 Kings 19:6)

That range is what makes the word hard to render. A stone set there may well have been under Jacob's head, while a spear driven into the ground stands beside Saul's rather than under it, and one Hebrew word covers both. Hebrew has a matching word for the other end of a person lying down, the place at the feet (מַרְגְּלוֹת), which is where Ruth lies down by Boaz. The two work rather like "the head of the bed" and "the foot of the bed" in English, except that Hebrew uses them just as readily of someone asleep on open ground.

Gen 28:11Gen 28:181Sa 19:131Sa 19:161Sa 26:71Sa 26:111Sa 26:161Ki 19:6

Disputed

Whether the noun names only the place at a person's head, or can also name the headrest placed in that spot.

  • majorityThe word is a place term throughout: it marks the spot at the head of one lying down, and a head support has to be inferred from the object the scene names, not from the word itself.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹת; DCH (Dictionary of Classical Hebrew), ed. David J. A. Clines, s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹת
  • minorityThe word can also denote what the head rests on, so a headrest reading is available at Genesis 28:11 and 1 Samuel 19:13.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹת

What scholars say about mera'ashah

The noun is a place formation from רֹאשׁ, feminine plural in form and carrying a pronominal suffix in all eight taggings (מְרַאֲשֹׁתָיו), matching מַרְגְּלוֹת, "the place at the feet" (Ruth 3:4, 3:7, 3:8, 3:14; Daniel 10:6). BDB (s.v.) glosses "place at the head" while allowing "head-rest"; HALOT and DCH treat it strictly as a locative noun, the place at someone's head, and both note the closely related spellings that STEPBible files under separate numbers: מַרְאֲשׁוֹת at Jeremiah 13:18, where the crown of glory falls from the addressees' head place, and the form מֵרַאֲשֹׁתֵי at 1 Samuel 26:12, analyzed either as this same noun with a prefixed preposition or as a shorter byform רַאֲשֹׁת with it. The Septuagint renders the word with the prepositional phrase πρὸς κεφαλῆς αὐτοῦ rather than with a noun, the clearest indication that Greek had no equivalent locative term; προσκεφάλαιον, the cushion of Mark 4:38, names the object and not the place. On Genesis 28:11, Westermann and Wenham observe that the clause asserts only that Jacob placed the stone at this spot, so the traditional pillow rendering supplies a function the Hebrew does not state, and both connect the stone's later erection as a pillar (Genesis 28:18) to the narrative rather than to any furniture of sleep. McCarter reads the goats' hair kevir of 1 Samuel 19:13 within the logic of Michal's ruse, where the object's exact function, a head covering suggesting hair or a bolster suggesting a body, is a matter of reconstruction rather than lexicography.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹתlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹתlexicon
  • DCH (Dictionary of Classical Hebrew), ed. David J. A. Clines, s.v. מְרַאֲשׁוֹתlexicon
  • Claus Westermann, Genesis 12-36: A Commentary (Continental Commentary, 1985), on Genesis 28:10-22commentary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 2, 1994), on Genesis 28:11commentary
  • P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel (Anchor Bible 8, 1980), on 1 Samuel 19:11-17 and 26:1-25commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (1990), on plurals of place and extensiongrammar

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

All attested forms of מְרַאֲשָׁוֹת

f p construct

מְרַאֲשֹׁתָיו

Gen 28:11, Gen 28:18, 1Sa 19:13, 1Sa 19:16, 1Sa 26:7, 1Sa 26:11, 1Sa 26:16, 1Ki 19:6