StrongerBible

sava

שָׂבָע

HebrewH7647plenty, abundance, ...

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 41:29Gen 41:30Gen 41:31Gen 41:34Gen 41:47Gen 41:53Pro 3:10Ecc 5:12(11)
Root family
Word studysah-VAHnoun

What sava means

plenty: a food supply so large that there is more than enough, the opposite of famine.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

This word lives in the world of harvest and storage. It names a supply that runs well past what people actually need: fields that keep producing for seven straight years, barns packed to the top. Because its natural opposite is famine, almost every use of it sits in a sentence where hunger has just ended or is about to begin. In Genesis it is the word for Egypt's good years, the ones Joseph tells Pharaoh to spend stockpiling grain.

Notice what it measures. It describes the size of the supply, not the feeling of the person eating. Biblical Hebrew has a companion word for that inner side, the fullness of someone who has eaten enough (שֹׂבַע), and the two are easy to mix up because they are written with the same three letters and differ only in their vowels. When a barn is said to be full of plenty, the subject is grain; when a person is said to eat to the full, the other word is doing the work. For plenty of anything at all, from years to words to riches, the Bible reaches for a much broader word (רֹב).

One passage turns it sour. In Ecclesiastes the plenty of a rich man is exactly what keeps him lying awake, while the worker sleeps soundly whether he has eaten little or much. The same word that meant rescue from starvation in Genesis becomes, in that line, a name for having too much.

Nuances

1aa plentiful food supply: harvests so large that no one goes without.
Gen 41:29Gen 41:30Gen 41:31Gen 41:34Gen 41:47Gen 41:53Pro 3:10
1bmore than a person needs, so much that the surplus becomes a burden.
TranslatabilityPartial
Ecc 5:12(11)

What scholars say about sava

The critical lexicons agree on the sense. BDB glosses שָׂבָע "plenty, sufficiency, satiety" and divides it in two: plenty of harvest (the six occurrences in Genesis 41, plus Proverbs 3:10) and satiety or surfeit (Ecclesiastes 5:11 in the Hebrew, 5:12 in English versification). HALOT and DCH gloss it "abundance, plenty" over the same distribution. The noun is one of several formations from the root שׂבע "to be sated": beside it stand the near-homograph שֹׂבַע (H7648) "satiety, one's fill," the adjective שָׂבֵעַ (H7649) "sated," and the rarer שׇׂבְעָה (H7654). H7647 and H7648 are distinguished by vocalization rather than by the consonantal text, which is why an individual form occasionally invites disagreement; the distribution is nevertheless clean, with H7647 confined to abundance of provisions and H7648 to the satisfied state of one who has eaten. On Ecclesiastes 5:11 (English 5:12) commentators divide over whether the rich man's problem is surplus wealth or overeating, and the English versions split accordingly between "abundance," "surfeit," and "full stomach." The theological dictionaries treat the whole root together, noting that plenty of food functions as a sign of covenant blessing and its absence as judgment, which is the frame Proverbs 3:10 assumes when it promises full barns to the person who honors the LORD with his produce.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. שָׂבָעlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. שָׂבָעlexicon
  • DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. שׂבעlexicon
  • NIDOTTE (VanGemeren, ed.), s.v. שׂבעdictionary
  • Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), s.v. שׂבעdictionary
  • Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary (1994)commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1-15, NICOT (2004)commentary
  • Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible (1997)commentary

All attested forms of שָׂבָע

m s absolute

שָּׂבָע, שָׂבָע

Gen 41:30, Gen 41:31, Gen 41:34, Gen 41:47, Gen 41:53, Ecc 5:12, Gen 41:29, Pro 3:10