mishteh

This is the word for a party, the big social meal that the Old Testament throws to mark a turning point: a child weaned, a wedding, a treaty sealed, a king's coronation. It is built from the verb for drinking, and that is the heart of it. A feast here is not just dinner; it is the wine flowing, the music, the long table, the guests staying late. The same word covers a quiet household gathering and a months-long royal celebration.

Most of the time it is purely festive and good. But because feasting is the picture of abundance and good fortune, the word also becomes a way of talking about the carefree, well-off life: the cheerful heart that lives as if every day were a banquet. And that same image turns dark in the prophets, who use the doomed feast (people drinking while ignoring God, or an enemy lulled with one final banquet) as a symbol of judgment about to fall.

The sense ranges from the event itself to what the event stands for, but a single core holds it together: an occasion of eating and drinking together, set apart from ordinary days.

In a handful of places the word does not mean the party but the thing you drink, listed as a provision alongside food and oil, or as a person's daily ration of drink at a royal table. The link to the first meaning is plain, since both come from the verb for drinking, but here the focus narrows from the celebration to the liquid itself.

This sense shows up where drink is being supplied, measured, or refused: the wine and food assigned to court trainees in Daniel, or the provisions paid out to laborers in Ezra. It is a concrete, everyday use of the word, with none of the festivity of a banquet.