to hold something up so it does not give way, by supplying whatever keeps it standing
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
At its heart this verb is about propping something up so it does not collapse. Whatever is sagging (a tired traveler, a person whose footing is slipping, a kingdom under strain) gets what it needs to keep standing. The word does not dwell on the effort of the one doing the holding. It names the outcome: the thing stays up.
That single picture stretches across three settings in the Hebrew Bible:
A host presses a meal on a guest, so that bread becomes what holds a traveler up for the road ahead.
God steadies someone who is about to go under, on a sickbed or on slippery ground.
Loyal love and justice keep a king's throne from toppling.
What links the meal to the rescue is the Hebrew way of speaking about the "heart" as the seat of a person's strength. To hold up someone's heart with a piece of bread and to hold up someone's whole life with God's loyal love are the same act at two scales, which is why one verb covers both.
Nearby verbs pull apart what this one holds together. Hebrew has a separate verb for pressing a hand or a weight down onto something to steady it (סָמַךְ), and another that looks from the other side, at the person doing the leaning (שָׁעַן).
Nuances
1ato put strength back into a tired person with food: to refresh someone with a meal
Gen 18:5Jdg 19:5Jdg 19:81Ki 13:7Psa 104:15
1bto hold a person up so they do not fall, most often God steadying someone in weakness or danger
It carries the standard phrase for offering a meal, where bread "sustains the heart" of a guest or a traveler before the road. Nearly half its uses are this hospitality expression, and the other word never joins with "heart" this way.Gen 18:5Jdg 19:51Ki 13:7Psa 104:15
It names what keeps a reign standing: a throne held up by loyalty, a kingdom held up by justice and right dealing.Pro 20:28Isa 9:7
Everywhere it occurs, the help comes from outside the person: God's hand, God's help sent from the sanctuary, God's care on a sickbed. The weak one is always the one propped up, never the one doing the leaning.Psa 18:35Psa 20:2Psa 41:3
Both
Both describe God holding up someone who would otherwise collapse, and they are close enough that one psalm asks for the first in one line and the second in the very next line.Psa 119:116Psa 145:14Psa 119:117Psa 94:18
Both can mean feeding someone to keep their strength up, whether with grain and wine, with raisins, or with a piece of bread.Gen 27:37Sng 2:5Gen 18:5Psa 104:15
It is the word for the ritual act of pressing a hand down on a head: on the animal being offered, on the man being set apart for service, on the one being sentenced. That whole world of worship and commissioning belongs to this word alone.Lev 1:4Num 27:18Lev 24:14
It can describe plain physical weight put on an object: a man bracing himself against pillars, a hand set on a wall, a body resting on a walking stick that may or may not hold.Jdg 16:29Amo 5:192Ki 18:21
The one in need can be the subject: a person leans, rests, or throws their weight onto God or onto another's word as an act of trust. The support is described from the side of the one depending, not the one propping.Isa 48:2Psa 71:62Ch 32:8
The same pressing can be hostile rather than helpful: an army bearing down on a city, or waves bearing down on a sufferer, where the weight crushes instead of steadies.Ezk 24:2Psa 88:7
תָּמַךְtakes firm hold of something and keeps it in hand, closer to gripping than to propping up
Only this word is used for reviving a tired person with food, the meal that puts strength back into a body before a journey.Gen 18:5Jdg 19:51Ki 13:7Psa 104:15
Only this word props up a throne or a kingdom, naming what keeps a rule standing over time.Pro 20:28Isa 9:7
Its help arrives as fresh strength for someone who has run out of it, a foot already sliding or a body already laid low by illness.Psa 94:18Psa 41:3Psa 20:2
Both
Both describe God keeping a person steady so that he does not fall, and English Bibles render either one as "uphold" or "hold up".Psa 18:35Psa 119:117Psa 63:8Isa 41:10
Both name the backing that keeps God's chosen instrument of justice in place, the kingdom held up by fair rule and the servant God keeps hold of.Isa 9:7Isa 42:1
Only this word describes a literal grip on something held in the hand: a spindle, a royal staff, another person's hand, or the bribe an honest person refuses to close his fingers around.Pro 31:19Amo 1:5Gen 48:17Isa 33:15
It can put the person in the active role, holding fast to a path or to a teaching so as not to let go of it.Psa 17:5Pro 3:18Pro 4:4
It can also turn against a person, describing someone caught and held by what he has done, whether the ropes of his own wrongdoing, a path that leads down to death, or a verdict that has closed on him.Pro 5:22Pro 5:5Job 36:17
שָׁעַןnames the act of leaning on someone or something, looking at the support from the dependent's side
It is the ordinary word for food putting strength back into a tired body: a host presses bread on his guests to "sustain the heart" before they travel on.Gen 18:5Jdg 19:51Ki 13:7Psa 104:15
It describes what the helper does, not what the helpless one does: God is the one holding a person up, and the person is simply held.Psa 20:2Psa 41:3Psa 94:18Psa 119:117
What it props up can be an institution rather than a body: a throne, or a kingdom kept standing by justice.Pro 20:28Isa 9:7
Both
Both start in the everyday world of a body that needs something to hold it up, and both are carried over to describe a person's dependence on God.Psa 94:182Ch 14:11Isa 50:10
Both answer the question of what keeps a king or a kingdom standing, one naming the loyal love that holds the throne up, the other naming the foreign power a king puts his weight on.Pro 20:282Ch 16:72Ch 16:8
They sit side by side in one scene of hospitality at Abraham's tent, where the visitors are invited to rest under the tree and then given bread to strengthen them.Gen 18:5Gen 18:4
It is the plain physical word for putting your weight on something: a spear, a servant's hand, a temple pillar.Jdg 16:262Sa 1:62Ki 5:18
Because the one leaning chooses what to lean on, this is the standard word for misplaced confidence, naming the wrong thing a person or a nation rests its weight on.2Ch 16:7Pro 3:5Isa 30:12Isa 31:1
It regularly comes with the picture of the prop giving way, so the leaning itself is exposed as worthless when the thing leaned on breaks.Job 8:15Ezk 29:7Mic 3:11
כּוּלis about providing and holding a supply over time, feeding a household through a famine rather than steadying someone about to fall
It is the word for catching someone at the moment their footing goes, the hand that steadies a person who is already slipping.Psa 94:18Psa 119:117Psa 18:35
It is the standard phrase for one meal that revives a traveler on the spot, offered as hospitality: a bite of bread to steady the heart before the journey resumes.Gen 18:5Jdg 19:51Ki 13:7
It is used of what keeps a throne or a kingdom standing, the loyalty and justice underneath a reign that hold it in place.Pro 20:28Isa 9:7
Both
Both are used for keeping a person alive by supplying food.Gen 45:11Gen 18:5
Both describe God holding a person up so that he does not collapse under what he is carrying.Psa 55:22Psa 94:18
Both can be answered with the plain English word "sustain", which is why English Bibles blur them: one keeps a person supplied, the other keeps a person propped up.Neh 9:21Psa 41:3
It is the word for how much something can hold. A basin holds two thousand baths, a cracked cistern holds no water at all, and even the highest heavens cannot hold God.1Ki 7:26Jer 2:131Ki 8:27
It covers bearing up under something almost unbearable: a day of judgment nobody can stand through, words a country cannot put up with, a sickness a person's own spirit has to carry him through.Mal 3:2Amo 7:10Pro 18:14
It describes provisioning that runs for months or years, an ongoing arrangement rather than a single act: Joseph feeding his whole family through the famine, officers each supplying the royal household for a month of the year, Obadiah keeping a hundred hidden prophets in bread and water.Gen 47:121Ki 4:71Ki 18:4
sa'ad in the other biblical languages
סְעַדAramaic“to support”the same root in Aramaic, used of prophets standing behind the temple builders and backing them up
Carries the everyday sense of putting food in someone so their strength holds: the standing invitation to take a piece of bread and "strengthen your heart" before travelling on.Gen 18:5Jdg 19:51Ki 13:7Psa 104:15
Is the word for God catching a person who is already giving way: the foot that is slipping, the body laid low by illness, the one who begs to be held up so he can stay safe.Psa 94:18Psa 119:117Psa 41:3Psa 18:35
Stretches beyond people to institutions, describing what keeps a throne or a kingdom steady over time rather than what keeps one person going.Pro 20:28Isa 9:7
Both
Both describe real backing that actually holds someone up, not a warm feeling about them: help arrives and the person keeps standing.Psa 94:18Ezr 5:2
In both, the support is given so that something can go forward: strength for the road ahead, or backing until the building is finished.Gen 18:5Ezr 5:2
The Aramaic word surfaces just once, and there the support is one group of people standing with another at their work: the prophets back the builders while the temple goes up. No food, no rescue from collapse, and no throne is in view, only company and encouragement in a shared job.Ezr 5:2
στηρίζωGreek“to establish”the Greek verb for setting something firmly in place so it will not shift, which Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures often used for this word
It can mean fixing something in one position so that it cannot be moved or crossed at all, which has nothing to do with propping up something weak.Luk 16:26Luk 9:51
It is the standard word for firming up what a person believes, so that convictions hold when they are tested.Luk 22:322Pe 1:12Rom 1:11
It usually looks ahead to a trial that has not arrived yet, strengthening someone in advance rather than meeting a need already pressing.Jas 5:81Th 3:13Rev 3:2
What scholars say about sa'ad
The standard Hebrew lexica treat this verb as a single root meaning to support, sustain, or uphold, with BDB glossing it "support, sustain, stay" and HALOT similarly "to support, strengthen"; DCH lists the same range with no homonym split. The idiom with "heart" as object, literally to support the heart, is recognized across the lexica as the standard expression for taking refreshment by food (Genesis 18:5;Judges 19:5, 8; Psalm 104:15), and 1 Kings 13:7 uses the verb without an object in that same hospitality setting. In the Psalter the verb is characteristically theological: the subject is God, or an attribute of God such as his right hand or his covenant loyalty, holding the worshipper up in sickness or when his footing gives way (Psalm 18:35; 20:2; 41:3; 94:18; 119:117). Proverbs 20:28 and Isaiah 9:7 apply the same image to royal rule, where covenant loyalty, justice, and righteousness are what keep the throne secure. The root is attested in Biblical Aramaic (Ezra 5:2) and more widely in the Semitic languages, and Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible commonly rendered it with the verb meaning to make firm.