to saturate or be saturated with liquid: to drink one's fill, and to water something to overflowing
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
At its heart this word pictures soaking something until it can hold no more. Rain falls until the ground is drenched; a thirsty person drinks until fully satisfied. The same verb names both the drenching and the being drenched, so it can describe what pours out and what soaks it up.
What gets saturated varies widely:
rain and streams water the fields until the furrows overflow
a weary or glad person is refreshed and filled to the full
a sword in battle drinks its fill of blood until the ground itself is soaked
a grieving city is drenched with tears, or made to swallow bitterness like a drink
Across all of these the picture holds steady: a fullness reached by soaking, whether the liquid is water, delight, blood, or sorrow. Hebrew keeps a single word here where English reaches for many, so a translation may say "water" in one verse and "satisfy" in the next without signaling that they are the same underlying image. A near-neighbor, שָׂבַע, covers being full and satisfied more generally, while שָׁקָה is the plain act of giving someone a drink; this word adds the note of saturation to overflowing.
Nuances
1ato water ground abundantly; drench land with rain or irrigation
Psa 65:10(11)Isa 55:10
1bto drink one's fill; refresh or satisfy a living being to overflowing, including with delight or love
Names the watering of land, crops, and the weary person: abundant moisture that refreshes and satisfies, with no hint of intoxication.Psa 65:10Isa 55:10Jer 31:25Pro 11:25
Describes being filled to full satisfaction, whether with fatness and plenty or, in judgment, with bitterness, staying at contentment rather than loss of control.Jer 31:14Isa 43:24Lam 3:15
Both
Both take up the battlefield image of a weapon soaking up blood, a sword or arrows drinking their fill until they are drenched.Isa 34:7Jer 46:10Deu 32:42Isa 49:26
Both describe drinking one's fill in a scene of feasting or love, satisfaction carried to abundance.Pro 7:18Sng 5:1Gen 43:34
What takes its fill is usually alive: a weary person revived, priests satisfied with rich food, lovers taking their fill of love through the night.Jer 31:25Jer 31:14Pro 5:19Pro 7:18
The limit it passes is an appetite rather than the rim of a vessel, so it marks the point where a thirst has been carried all the way to satisfaction.Psa 36:8Isa 43:24Pro 11:25
Turns to the battlefield, where a sword and the soil under it drink their fill of blood.Isa 34:5Isa 34:7Jer 46:10
Can soak a person in sorrow: a mourner drenching a ruined vineyard with his own tears, or a sufferer made to swallow bitterness like a drink.Isa 16:9Lam 3:15
Both
Both describe God saturating farmland until it yields a crop, and they stand in back-to-back lines of one psalm: he makes the earth brim with water, then drenches its furrows.Psa 65:9Psa 65:10Isa 55:10
Both reach past the ordinary word for being full: each stands next to a word for filled or satisfied and names the step beyond it, so the threshing floors are full and the vats go over, and the weary soul is filled and the drooping soul is soaked.Jol 2:24Jer 31:25Jer 46:10
Both carry promises of plenty restored after devastation, the vats refilled for a people stripped by locusts and the mourners of the exile refreshed again.Jol 2:24Jer 31:14Jer 31:25
What brims is a container: the wine vats spill over with new wine and oil because the crop has outrun the storage built for it.Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
The limit it passes belongs to the thing holding the plenty, the edge of a vat or the capacity of a field, so it names supply running past a boundary and never a need being felt and met.Jol 2:24Psa 65:9
The picture of running presses works either way: brimming vats announce a restored harvest in one place, and in another the nations are trodden like grapes with the presses going over.Jol 3:13Jol 2:24
ravah in the other biblical languages
μεθύωGreek“to get drunk”the Greek word for making or getting drunk, which the Greek Old Testament often uses to render this verb, though it narrows the picture to intoxication rather than saturation of any kind
ποτίζωGreek“to water”the Greek word for watering or giving a drink, close to the causative side of this verb but without its note of being soaked to fullness
The Hebrew word stands with whoever receives, filled until there is nothing more to want. Guests take in all the good of God's house, and a tired person is restored to the point of having had enough.Psa 36:8Jer 31:25
It is at home in the language of appetite and desire, where having your fill of something good is the whole point: a wife's love that keeps a husband satisfied, or lovers who mean to take their fill of each other.Pro 5:19Pro 7:18
The same idea turns grim without changing its shape. A sword drinks until it is full, the ground is soaked through with blood, and a suffering man is made to swallow bitterness until he can hold no more.Isa 34:5Jer 46:10Lam 3:15
It runs in both directions at once, which lets a proverb say that the person who refreshes others ends up refreshed himself.Pro 11:25
Both
Both words cover water coming down from the sky onto the ground, which is why each carries the ordinary talk about rain in its own Testament. Isaiah says the rain and snow come down and give the earth its drink, and Jesus says God sends rain on everyone alike.Isa 55:10Mat 5:45
Both can leave the weather behind and describe tears making something wet: a prophet weeping over a ruined town until it is drenched, and a woman weeping until Jesus' feet are wet.Isa 16:9Luk 7:38
The Greek word looks up at the sky and names what it sends, so what comes down does not have to be water at all. Fire and burning sulfur falling on Sodom are described with the same verb, rendered "rained" there.Luk 17:29
Because it names rain as an event heaven starts, it is also the word used when heaven is shut and nothing falls at all. Elijah prayed and it did not rain for three and a half years, and the two witnesses are given power to keep the sky closed.Jas 5:17Rev 11:6
It reports the arrival of the water, not how much anything soaked up. God sends rain on the good and the evil without measuring either, and the word says only that the rain came.Mat 5:45
What scholars say about ravah
The lexica treat רוה as a single root meaning to be saturated or to drink one's fill, with a causative sense to water or drench. BDB and HALOT list the same range across the qal, piel, and hiphil stems: land watered by rain, persons satisfied to the full, and a sword sated with blood. TWOT notes the frequent metaphorical extension from physical drinking to abundant satisfaction and, negatively, to being made to drink sorrow. No live debate attaches to the sense.