StrongerBible

sha'anan

שַׁאֲנָן

HebrewH7600“at ease, complacent, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Ki 19:28Job 12:5Psa 123:4Isa 32:9Isa 32:11Isa 32:18Isa 33:20Isa 37:29Amo 6:1Zec 1:15
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeshah-ah-NAHNadjective

What sha'anan means

undisturbed and unafraid: settled in an ease that is either God's gift of safety or a person's own smug indifference

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

The word describes one posture: a person, a city, or a nation with nothing to fear and nothing disturbing them. Sometimes that is exactly what God promises. Isaiah pictures his people living in "quiet resting places" and Jerusalem as a tent whose pegs are never pulled up. The verb built on the same root (שָׁאַן) makes the same promise to anyone who listens to wisdom.

But the prophets found that this untroubled calm was also the thing they most needed to attack. When the safety is self made, propped up by wealth or walls or an army, the very same word becomes the charge. Isaiah 32 does both jobs within ten verses: the women who are "at ease" are ordered to tremble in verse 9, and in verse 18 the people are promised "undisturbed" resting places. The word has not changed. What changes is where the safety came from.

Wherever it carries an accusation, the pattern holds: the comfortable have concluded that trouble will not reach them.

  • the powerful of Jerusalem and Samaria, certain their capitals cannot fall
  • the tormentors of the pilgrims, whose comfort has curdled into contempt
  • the empires that punished Israel and then relished the work
  • Job's friends, whose confident theology comes from never having slipped

That is why the word so often stands beside the verb for putting your confidence in something (בָּטַח). The prophets are not asking whether people feel safe; they are asking what people are leaning on. Two lives can look identical from the outside, quiet and unafraid, and the Bible sorts them by their source: safety received as a gift, or safety claimed as a right.

Nuances

1aquiet and undisturbed: the settled safety God gives to his people and to their home
TranslatabilityApproximate
Isa 32:18Isa 33:20
1bsmug: settled in an untroubled ease that has stopped caring about God or about people who suffer
TranslatabilityApproximate
Job 12:5Psa 123:4Isa 32:9Isa 32:11Amo 6:1Zec 1:15
1carrogance: the untroubled self assurance of a king who assumes nothing can touch him
CertaintyContested
2Ki 19:28Isa 37:29
2Ki 19:28

Whether the received Hebrew text of this line should stand, reading "your arrogance", or be corrected to "your uproar".

  • majorityThe received text stands and names the king's complacent self assurance, which suits the boasting of Assyrian royal inscriptions; the great Isaiah scroll from Qumran spells the word out in full and supports it.; Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible, 1988), 237-239; Marvin A. Sweeney, I & II Kings (Old Testament Library, 2007); T. R. Hobbs, 2 Kings (Word Biblical Commentary, 1985)
  • minorityThe text should be corrected to "your uproar", giving a tighter pair with "your raging" in the same line.; Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (Handkommentar zum Alten Testament); Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, apparatus at 2 Kings 19:28
Isa 37:29

Whether the received Hebrew text of this line should stand, reading "your arrogance", or be corrected to "your uproar".

  • majorityThe received text stands and names the king's complacent self assurance; the great Isaiah scroll from Qumran spells the word out in full and supports it.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39 (Continental Commentary, 2002); J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah (Hermeneia, 2015); Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible, 1988), 237-239
  • minorityThe text should be corrected to "your uproar", and the ancient Greek translator of Isaiah already read it that way, rendering it "your rage".; Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia (Handkommentar zum Alten Testament); Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, apparatus at Isaiah 37:29

What scholars say about sha'anan

The lexica converge on a bipolar semantic map within a single lexeme. BDB (983) glosses the adjective "at ease, secure" and then lists a pejorative extension, "in a bad sense, haughty," at Amos 6:1; Isa 32:9, 11; Zech 1:15; Ps 123:4; and 2 Kgs 19:28 // Isa 37:29. HALOT (IV 1375-1376) gives "carefree, quiet, at ease, secure" with a flagged pejorative "arrogant, self-assured, complacent," and treats the Sennacherib occurrence as a sub-entry or homograph glossed "arrogance, uproar," possibly tied to שָׁאוֹן. DCH (VIII 152-154) ranges "tranquil, at ease; carefree, secure; complacent, arrogant" and likewise records a possible שַׁאֲנָן II. Gesenius (18th ed., 1339-1340) has "sorglos, ungestört, sicher" and secondarily "selbstsicher, überheblich," separating שַׁאֲנָן II outright and rejecting Akkadian šanānu "to rival" as unrelated. Ringgren (TDOT XIV) and Stolz (TLOT 3, 1281-1283) reject homonymy and account for the negative pole as prophetic inversion: the same security is blessing when granted by YHWH and sin when self-generated. Waltke (TWOT 2304) formulates the same mechanism. Etymology is obscure: the Arabic sakana comparison founders phonologically, a class of comparison Barr (Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 1968) treated with programmatic skepticism.

On individual passages the sense is largely uncontested. Paul (Amos, Hermeneia, 1991) treats the plural at Amos 6:1 as a technical prophetic pejorative for careless self-security grounded in Zion ideology, and defends the received text against the older emendation to שֹׂנְאִים reflected in the Greek ἐξουθενοῦσιν; Wolff, Jeremias and Mays suspect "in Zion" of being a later Judahite gloss, a redactional and not a semantic reservation. Meyers and Meyers (Anchor Bible, 1987), Petersen (Old Testament Library, 1984) and Boda (NICOT, 2016) read Zech 1:15 intertextually with Amos 6:1 and Isa 10:5-15. Kraus, Hossfeld and Zenger, Goldingay and Alter all read Ps 123:4 sociologically, of a comfortable oppressor class; the ketiv/qere debate in that verse concerns the following word, not this one. At Job 12:5 the line is severely damaged, and Pope's "torch" reading competes with the repointing to לְפִיד "for calamity" adopted by Dhorme, Clines (Word Biblical Commentary, 1989, 277-279, 292-294), Habel and Hartley, but the pejorative force of the word itself is common ground. The one genuine semantic crux is 2 Kgs 19:28 // Isa 37:29, where Cogan and Tadmor (Anchor Bible, 1988, 237-239) retain the received text as a suffixed pejorative abstract, supported by the plene spelling in 1QIsaiah-a, against Duhm and the BHS apparatus, which read שְׁאוֹנְךָ. The ancient Greek versions divide in exactly the same way: στρῆνος at 4 Kingdoms 19:28 against θυμός at Isa 37:29, while the positive pole is rendered ἡσυχάζω (Prov 1:33) and πείθω or ἀναπαύομαι (Isa 32:11, 18).

Where scholars disagree about sha'anan

Whether the Hebrew has one word here or two: a single word whose negative uses are the prophets' doing, or a second, separate word meaning "arrogance, uproar" in the oracle against Sennacherib.

  • majorityOne word throughout. Its negative uses are prophetic reversal, the same settled ease counted as sin when it is self generated, and the Sennacherib line is that reversal at its most extreme.; BDB, s.v. שָׁאַן / שַׁאֲנָן, 983; H. Ringgren, "שׁאן," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XIV (2004); F. Stolz, "שׁאן," Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 3, 1281-1283; Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible, 1988), 237-239
  • minorityA second, separate word for "arrogance, uproar" should be recognized in 2 Kings 19:28 and Isaiah 37:29, probably connected with the noun for a roar or din.; HALOT, s.v. שַׁאֲנָן (vol. IV, 1375-1376); DCH, ed. D. J. A. Clines, s.v. שַׁאֲנָן (vol. VIII, 152-154); Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed. (Lieferung 6, 2010), 1339-1340
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

  • HALOT, s.v. שַׁאֲנָן (vol. IV, 1375-1376)lexicon
  • BDB, s.v. שָׁאַן / שַׁאֲנָן, 983lexicon
  • DCH, ed. D. J. A. Clines, s.v. שַׁאֲנָן (vol. VIII, 152-154)lexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed. (Lieferung 6, 2010), 1339-1340lexicon
  • H. Ringgren, "שׁאן," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. XIV (2004)dictionary
  • F. Stolz, "שׁאן," Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 3, 1281-1283dictionary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, "שָׁאַן," Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, 2304dictionary
  • Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible, 1988), 237-239commentary
  • Marvin A. Sweeney, I & II Kings (Old Testament Library, 2007)commentary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39 (Continental Commentary, 2002)commentary
  • John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39 (NICOT, 1986)commentary
  • J. J. M. Roberts, First Isaiah (Hermeneia, 2015)commentary
  • Shalom M. Paul, Amos (Hermeneia, 1991)commentary
  • Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 (Anchor Bible, 1987)commentary
  • Mark J. Boda, The Book of Zechariah (NICOT, 2016)commentary
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 3 (Hermeneia, 2011)commentary
  • John Goldingay, Psalms 90-150 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms, 2008)commentary
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary, 1989), 277-279, 292-294commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job, 3rd ed. (Anchor Bible, 1973), 89-91commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15 (NICOT, 2004), 210-211commentary
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (1968)monograph
  • T. Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Peeters, 2009)lexicon

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

All attested forms of שַׁאֲנָן

f p absolute

שַׁאֲנַנּוֹת

Isa 32:9, Isa 32:11, Isa 32:18

m p absolute

שַּׁאֲנַנִּים

Psa 123:4, Amo 6:1, Zec 1:15

m s absolute

שַׁאֲנָן

Job 12:5, Isa 33:20

m s construct

שַׁאֲנַנְךָ

2Ki 19:28, Isa 37:29