a secret plot to seize power: a treasonous scheme, most often to kill or dethrone a reigning king
This is the Bible's standard word for a coup. It names a secret plot, hatched by a group, to overthrow whoever holds power, and in almost every case that power is a king. It comes from the verb קָשַׁר, "to tie" or "bind," so the picture underneath the word is of people bound together against their ruler.
Its home is the royal history books. It labels Absalom's revolt against his father David, and one palace assassination after another in the books of Kings and Chronicles: Zimri striking down Elah, the killing of Joash, Amaziah, Zechariah, and Pekah. When Queen Athaliah sees the boy king Joash crowned against her, she tears her robes and screams this one word twice, "Treason! Treason!"
The word also stretches in two directions beyond a palace coup. In Jeremiah it is aimed not at a throne but at God: a "conspiracy" of the men of Judah to break faith with the covenant, treason against the LORD himself. In Ezekiel it shifts from the plot to the plotters, naming the scheming band as a group. And in Isaiah it carries the flavor of a feared political alliance, the very thing the panicking people keep crying out against.
- Absalom's plot to unseat his father David
- the string of assassinations that toppled kings of Israel and Judah
- a whole people colluding to abandon their covenant with God
- a ring of corrupt prophets preying on the nation from within