mishbar

מִשְׁבָּר is a miqtal result-noun from the root שׁבר "to break, shatter," so literally "a thing that breaks," a breaker. All the major lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH, Gesenius, and Fabry in TDOT) agree on the derivation and the lexical sense "breaker, wave of the sea"; the meaning itself is not in dispute. It occurs 5 times, all poetic: 2 Samuel 22:5; Psalm 42:8 (English 42:7); Psalm 88:8 (English 88:7); Psalm 93:4; and Jonah 2:4 (English 2:3). It should not be confused with the homograph מַשְׁבֵּר "mouth of the womb, birth opening" (2 Kings 19:3; Isaiah 37:3; Hosea 13:13), a separate formation from the same root. The nominalization of this root for "wave" appears to be a uniquely Hebrew development, with no clear cognate noun for "wave" in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, or Arabic. A clean pattern runs through the five: in construct the word binds to a mythic-cosmic noun (breakers of Death, breakers of Sea) as the waters God masters (2 Samuel 22:5; Psalm 93:4), while with a second-person suffix "your breakers" belongs to God as instrument of affliction (Psalm 42:8; Psalm 88:8; Jonah 2:4). The chief scholarly debate is the wider Chaoskampf question: whether this water imagery descends from an inherited Near Eastern combat tradition (waves as a chaos-power the LORD defeats: Day, Kraus, Levenson) or is better read as concrete death-and-Sheol imagery without a live combat myth (Watson, Tsumura). This debate concerns the imagery's background and theology, not the word's lexical meaning. On the versions: the Greek Psalter and Greek Jonah render it μετεωρισμός "surge, swelling," while Greek 2 Samuel etymologizes it as συντριμμοί "crushings." 2 Samuel 22:5 also stands against the parallel Psalm 18:5, whose standard Hebrew text reads חֶבְלֵי "cords" rather than this word; the Samuel reading is generally judged the older (Cross and Freedman, McCarter), with Craigie a notable dissenter.