StrongerBible

osher

עֹשֶׁר

HebrewH6239riches, wealth

Appears 37 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 31:161Sa 17:251Ki 3:111Ki 3:131Ki 10:231Ch 29:121Ch 29:282Ch 1:112Ch 1:122Ch 9:222Ch 17:52Ch 18:1Est 1:4Est 5:11Psa 49:6(7)Psa 52:7(9)Pro 11:28Pro 13:8Pro 14:24Jer 9:23(22)Dan 11:2
Root family
Word studyOH-shernoun

What osher means

riches: great material wealth, the abundance of money, goods, and prized possessions that marks a person as rich

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled

This word names wealth itself: the sheer abundance of silver, livestock, land, and fine possessions that sets a rich person apart. It is what a king like Solomon is famous for and what a prosperous family passes down. The focus falls on the quantity and the standing it brings, not on any one kind of property.

It is at home in Israel's wisdom writings, where it carries a deliberate double edge. Proverbs can present riches as a reward that walks alongside honor and long life, and as something wisdom itself holds out. Yet the same books warn that riches are unreliable, that they can vanish overnight, and that they tempt a person to trust in them instead of in God. Ecclesiastes returns again and again to wealth that its owner never lives to enjoy.

Across all its uses the sense stays steady. It always points to concrete material wealth rather than to an inner or spiritual kind of richness, so the reader should hear it as plain prosperity, colored good or bad only by the passage around it.

Gen 31:161Sa 17:251Ki 3:111Ki 3:131Ki 10:231Ch 29:121Ch 29:282Ch 1:112Ch 1:122Ch 9:222Ch 17:52Ch 18:1

What scholars say about osher

The standard lexica (HALOT, BDB) gloss עֹשֶׁר uniformly as "riches, wealth," a masculine noun derived from the root ʿšr "to be rich." The sense is not in doubt: it denotes material abundance across every attestation. Its distribution is concentrated in the wisdom and post-exilic literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Chronicles, Esther, Daniel), and the theological dictionaries (TDOT, NIDOTTE) treat it chiefly under the sapiential evaluation of wealth, where it functions both as a mark of divine blessing (1 Kings 3:13; Proverbs 22:4) and as an object of prophetic and sapiential critique for its instability and its power to displace trust in God (Jeremiah 9:23; Psalm 49:6; Ecclesiastes 5:13-14). It stands within a small set of near-synonyms for wealth (הוֹן, נֶכֶס, חַיִל) and is regularly paired with כָּבוֹד "honor" in the reward formulas of Kings, Chronicles, and Proverbs.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. עֹשֶׁרlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. עֹשֶׁרlexicon
  • TDOT, s.v. עשׁרdictionary
  • NIDOTTE, s.v. עשׁרdictionary

All attested forms of עֹשֶׁר

m s absolute

עֹשֶׁר

Gen 31:16, 1Sa 17:25, 1Ki 3:11, 1Ki 3:13, 1Ki 10:23, 1Ch 29:12, 1Ch 29:28, 2Ch 1:11

m s construct

עָשְׁרוֹ

Est 5:11, Psa 52:7, Pro 11:28, Pro 13:8, Jer 9:23, Dan 11:2

m s construct

עָשְׁרָם

Psa 49:6, Pro 14:24

m s construct

עֹשֶׁר

Est 1:4