StrongerBible

sokh

סֹךְ

HebrewH5520“den, covert, ...”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Psa 10:9Psa 27:5Psa 76:2(3)Jer 25:38
Word studyResearch-gradesohknoun

What sokh means

a hidden den: a screen of woven cover that keeps whoever owns it out of sight

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

Behind this word is a screen of woven branches. The cover may have grown there on its own, like the tangle a lion lies down in, or it may have been built by hand, like a hut of boughs. Either way the effect is the same: something is inside and cannot be seen. Hebrew has a commoner word for a shelter of branches (סֻכָּה), which covers farmers' huts and the shelters of the autumn festival. This rarer word is kept for a much narrower job, and it never appears without an owner: it is always somebody's own hiding place.

That is why the same word can name a lion's den and God's dwelling in Jerusalem without straining. A lair is not only where a predator hides. It is where he waits, and the place is unsettling because of who is inside it. Scripture pushes the image in two directions: when the hidden one is a violent man, or God coming out to judge, the word is a lair; when the hidden one is God covering someone who has run to him for safety, the word is a shelter.

The two directions meet in Psalm 76:2, where God's cover is in Salem and his dwelling (מְעֹנָה) is in Zion, and that second word is used elsewhere of the den where lions raise their cubs. The city where God shelters his people is also the place he comes out from. That double edge is the point of the word rather than an accident of it.

Nuances

1aa predator's lair: the screened den a lion lies hidden in and springs out from
TranslatabilityDirect
Psa 10:9Jer 25:38
1bGod's own cover: the shelter he hides his people inside, and the dwelling he keeps in his city
Psa 27:5Psa 76:2(3)
Psa 27:5

Whether Psalm 27:5 is an occurrence of this noun or of the commoner feminine noun for a booth that the Masoretic reading tradition substitutes.

  • contestedThe written consonants give this noun, and the verse belongs with its other occurrences.; HALOT, s.v. סֹךְ; D. J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. סֹךְ
  • contestedThe reading tradition should be followed, so the verse belongs to the feminine noun for a booth.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 697
Psa 76:2

Whether the shelter in Salem is God's dwelling in the city or, under the lion imagery of the psalm, God's lair.

  • contestedThe word names God's covert under the figure of a lion, matching the predator imagery of the surrounding verses.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 697; HALOT, s.v. סֹךְ; M. E. Tate, Psalms 51-100 (WBC 20; Word, 1990)
  • contestedThe word names God's booth or dwelling in Zion, parallel to the word for his dwelling place in the second half of the line.; D. J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. סֹךְ

What scholars say about sokh

The lexica agree on the semantics of this rare segholate noun and differ only on how to carve up its four to five attestations. BDB (697) glosses "thicket, covert, lair," recording Jeremiah 25:38, Psalm 10:9, Psalm 76:3 (English 76:2), and Psalm 27:5, where it recommends reading with the Qere as סֻכָּה following Olshausen, Hupfeld-Nowack, and Baethgen. HALOT lists the same verses plus Lamentations 2:6 as an orthographic variant, giving "thicket, lair" for the animal-den passages and "hut, covert" for the divine-dwelling ones, and it registers Akkadian sukku "chapel, small shrine" (AHw 1055; CAD S) alongside Aramaic סַכָּא and Syriac forms for a thatched roof. Gesenius 18. Aufl. (878-79) reconstructs the etymology as an interweaving of boughs and presses the Akkadian cognate harder than earlier editions, tipping the lexeme toward shrine resonance. DCH VI treats the noun as a lemma distinct from סֻכָּה and divides its attestations into a lion's lair (Jeremiah 25:38; Psalm 10:9) and YHWH's booth (Psalm 76:3; Psalm 27:5). TWOT §1492 (R. H. Alexander) states the root idea as "an interwoven or entangled protection"; TDOT X folds the noun into the article on סָכַךְ without independent theological treatment.

The morphology settles the analysis. A suffixed סֻכָּה would show the ת, as at Job 36:29 and 2 Samuel 22:12, so the suffixed forms סֻכּוֹ and סֻכֹּה must derive from a masculine base of geminate root (Joüon-Muraoka §88Cd). The word should not be confused with סָךְ "throng" (Psalm 42:4) or with סְבָךְ "thicket," from a distinct root.

On Psalm 10:9 the modern consensus for MT is solid: Gunkel (HKAT, 1926), Kraus (BKAT XV/1, 220-21), Dahood (AB 16, 63, defending MT via Ugaritic sk), Craigie (WBC 19, 122), Goldingay, Alter, and Gerstenberger all keep the noun and gloss "lair" or "covert," against the nineteenth-century emendation to סֻבְּכוֹ urged by Lagarde, Cheyne, and Wellhausen. On Jeremiah 25:38 Bright (AB 21, 162), Holladay (Hermeneia, 678-79), McKane (ICC, 653-56), Lundbom (AYB 21B, 269-71), Carroll (OTL, 512-13), Allen (OTL, 288-89), Thompson (NICOT, 519), and Fischer (HThKAT, 2005) unanimously retain MT and identify YHWH as the lion; Giesebrecht's parallel emendation has no modern following, and the medieval identification of the lair with the Temple (Rashi, Kimchi) is rejected across the commentary literature. The disputes on that verse concern its second colon (חֲרוֹן against a LXX-derived הַיּוֹנָה) and the authenticity of vv. 34-38, not the noun.

The live hermeneutical conflict is at Psalm 27:5, where the noun sits inside a dense sanctuary vocabulary (בֵּית יְהוָה, הֵיכָל, אֹהֶל, צוּר). Kraus (Psalmen 1-59, 366-68), drawing on Delekat's Asylie und Schutzorakel am Zionheiligtum, reads a concrete cultic asylum, and Dahood (AB 16, 168) pushes further toward a literal divine dwelling on the strength of Ugaritic sk/skn. Craigie (WBC 19, 232), Goldingay (2006, 391-92), Alter (2007, 92-93), Hossfeld and Zenger (NEchtB 29), and deClaissé-Walford, Jacobson and Tanner (NICOT, 262) treat the language as figurative sanctuary imagery within the Zion theology mapped by Levenson (Sinai and Zion) and Ollenburger (Zion, the City of the Great King).

Lamentations 2:6 falls outside this lemma in the present corpus because MT spells it with שׂ and STEPBible files it under a separate number. BDB (968) accordingly gives it its own entry while noting that the שׂ is perhaps erroneous; HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius 18 read it as a graphic variant of this noun, and Hillers (AB 7A rev., 96-97), Provan (NCBC, 65-66), Berlin (OTL, 65-67), Dobbs-Allsopp (Interpretation, 87-89), Renkema (HCOT, 236-39), House (WBC 23B, 383-84), and Parry (THOTC) render "he tore down his booth" with the Temple in view, against the LXX's ἄμπελον and the older reading of a hedge from a distinct root.

The ancient versions bifurcate by context, corroborating the two-track semantics: LXX μάνδρα and Vulgate cubile for the lair passages, σκηνή and σκήνωμα with tabernaculum and tentorium for the divine-shelter ones. Targum Jonathan at Jeremiah 25:38 politicizes the image as a foreign king leaving his citadel, defusing the picture of YHWH as predator, while Targum Lamentations equates the noun outright with the בֵּית מִקְדָּשׁ. Tov notes that MT Jeremiah 25:34-38 carries significant pluses over the Old Greek, so the lion clause may not have stood in the earliest Greek at all.

Where scholars disagree about sokh

Whether the noun at Lamentations 2:6, which the Masoretic Text spells with a different sibilant letter and which carries its own Strong's number, is this same word.

  • majorityThe Lamentations spelling is a graphic variant of this noun, so that verse is a further occurrence of it.; HALOT, s.v. סֹךְ; D. J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. סֹךְ; W. Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18. Aufl. (Berlin: Springer, 2013), 878-79; D. R. Hillers, Lamentations (AB 7A; rev. ed., Doubleday, 1992), 96-97
  • minorityThe Lamentations form is listed as a separate word, though its spelling may be an error for this one.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1907), 968
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

  • F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907), 697-98, 968lexicon
  • L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, J. J. Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1994-2000), vol. II, s.v. סֹךְlexicon
  • D. J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VI (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2007), s.v. סֹךְlexicon
  • W. Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18. Aufl., ed. H. Donner et al. (Berlin: Springer, 2013), 878-79lexicon
  • R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, B. K. Waltke (eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1980), §1492 (R. H. Alexander)dictionary
  • G. J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren, H.-J. Fabry (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ET vol. X (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), s.v. סָכַךְ (Kellermann/Fabry)dictionary
  • W. von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1965-81), 1011, 1055lexicon
  • P. Joüon and T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, §88Cdgrammar
  • H.-J. Kraus, Psalmen 1-59 (BKAT XV/1; 5. Aufl., Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1978), 220-21, 366-68commentary
  • M. Dahood, Psalms I: 1-50 (AB 16; Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), 63, 168commentary
  • P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC 19; Waco: Word, 1983), 122, 232commentary
  • M. E. Tate, Psalms 51-100 (WBC 20; Waco: Word, 1990)commentary
  • N. deClaissé-Walford, R. A. Jacobson, B. L. Tanner, The Book of Psalms (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 262commentary
  • W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah 1 (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 678-79commentary
  • W. McKane, Jeremiah, Vol. 1: I-XXV (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 653-56commentary
  • J. R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 21-36 (AYB 21B; New York: Doubleday, 2004), 269-71commentary
  • D. R. Hillers, Lamentations (AB 7A; rev. ed., New York: Doubleday, 1992), 87, 96-97commentary
  • A. Berlin, Lamentations (OTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 65-67commentary
  • L. Delekat, Asylie und Schutzorakel am Zionheiligtum (Leiden: Brill, 1967)monograph
  • J. D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985)monograph
  • B. C. Ollenburger, Zion, the City of the Great King (JSOTSup 41; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987)monograph
  • E. Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3rd ed. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015)monograph

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

All attested forms of סֹךְ

m s construct

סֻכֹּה, סֻכּוֹ

Psa 10:9, Psa 27:5, Psa 76:2, Jer 25:38