StrongerBible

shever

שֶׁבֶר

HebrewH7668“grain, provisions, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 42:1Gen 42:2Gen 42:19Gen 42:26Gen 43:2Gen 44:2Gen 47:14Neh 10:31(32)Amo 8:5
Root family
Word studySHEH-vernoun

What shever means

grain as something bought and sold: the food a household pays for when its own harvest has failed

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is grain seen from the buyer's side of a counter. Almost every use of it sits inside the Joseph story, where famine empties Canaan and the only food left anywhere is in Egypt, behind a price. The word travels with the silver at every stage:

  • Jacob sees that there is grain to be had in Egypt and sends his sons down to buy some so the family will live (Genesis 42:1, Genesis 42:2)
  • The brothers load the grain they have paid for onto their donkeys and set off home (Genesis 42:26)
  • Joseph gathers up all the silver in Egypt and Canaan in exchange for the grain people keep buying (Genesis 47:14)

Hebrew has other words for grain, and they look at other stages of it. One of them (דָּגָן) names the cereal crop a land yields, the wheat and barley that come in with the harvest. Another (בַּר) names the clean kernel left once the threshing is done. Amos 8:5 puts this word and that one in a single sentence, which shows how close they can sit. What sets this one apart is the transaction: it assumes someone selling and someone paying, which is why translators often reach for "provisions" or "rations" instead of plain "grain."

The two uses outside Genesis keep exactly that setting. Amos hears grain traders itching for the holy day to end so they can get back to selling with short measures and rigged scales (Amos 8:5), and the returned exiles in Nehemiah bind themselves not to buy grain that outsiders bring to market on the Sabbath (Nehemiah 10:31). Even where no famine is in view, the word still belongs to the marketplace.

Gen 42:1Gen 42:2Gen 42:19Gen 42:26Gen 43:2Gen 44:2Gen 47:14Neh 10:31(32)Amo 8:5

What scholars say about shever

The lexica list this noun as שֶׁבֶר II, a homograph of שֶׁבֶר I "breaking, fracture," and nearly all derive it from the root שׁבר "to break": BDB glosses it "corn, grain (as if broken into kernels)," and HALOT, Gesenius 18th ed. (Donner et al.), TWOT, NIDOTTE (Els) and Klein all follow the same architecture of two headwords over one underlying root, with the verb שׁבר II "buy grain" (H7666) understood as a later Hebrew coinage built on this noun rather than the reverse. TDOT (Fabry) and TLOT (Stoebe) present the same picture: a Hebrew-internal specialization rather than an independent Proto-Semitic root. Comparative evidence supports that judgment, since Akkadian šebēru, Ugaritic ṯbr, Aramaic təḇar, Arabic ṯabara and Ethiopic säbära attest only the destructive sense, and each of those languages uses an unrelated verb for buying (Akkadian šâmu, Ugaritic mkr, Aramaic זבן). BDB itself floats an alternative bridging image, grain as what "breaks out" of the soil, and DCH declines to adjudicate the derivation at all on the programmatic principle that a synchronic dictionary should not settle diachronic questions, while still listing the two lexemes as functionally distinct. On the usage side, the noun is concentrated in Genesis 42 to 47 alongside the verb; Waltke notes that silver appears twenty times and the grain vocabulary nineteen across Genesis 42 to 45, so the commodity trade supplies the framework for the whole reunion. Alter renders the noun consistently as "provisions" to preserve its mercantile flavor, Speiser reads the associated participle הַמַּשְׁבִּיר as a bureaucratic title along the lines of an Egyptian granary official, and Sarna draws out the narrative irony that the brothers who caused a שֶׁבֶר in the family go down to Egypt to buy שֶׁבֶר from the brother they broke.

Where scholars disagree about shever

Whether this noun for grain derives from the root שׁבר "to break," and if so through which image, or whether its derivation should be left unsettled.

  • majorityIt is a Hebrew-internal development from the root "to break," the mediating image being kernels broken or threshed loose from the ear; the lexica accordingly list two headwords over one underlying root, and the verb שׁבר II "buy grain" is a coinage built on this noun. The comparative Semitic evidence supports the split being Hebrew-internal, since the cognates in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic and Ethiopic carry only the destructive sense and use unrelated verbs for commerce.; HALOT, s.v. šbr I / šbr II; BDB, s.v. שֶׁבֶר (H7668), "corn, grain (as if broken into kernels)"; H.-J. Fabry, "שׁבר", TDOT vol. XIV (Eerdmans, 2004); P. J. J. S. Els, "שׁבר", NIDOTTE vol. 4 (Zondervan, 1997); E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987)
  • minorityThe bridging image is not threshed kernels but grain "breaking out" of the ground, that is, sprouting as the chief produce of the soil. BDB entertains this alongside the threshed-kernel explanation rather than choosing between them.; BDB, s.v. שֶׁבֶר II (H7668)
  • minorityA synchronic dictionary should not adjudicate the derivation at all. The two nouns are listed as functionally distinct words, with no claim made about deriving one from the other.; DCH VIII, ed. D. J. A. Clines (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), s.v. שׁבר II

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. שׁבר IIlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. שֶׁבֶר II (H7668)lexicon
  • DCH VIII, ed. D. J. A. Clines (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), s.v. שׁבר IIlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed., ed. Donner et al.lexicon
  • H.-J. Fabry, "שׁבר", TDOT vol. XIV (Eerdmans, 2004)theological-dictionary
  • P. J. J. S. Els, "שׁבר", NIDOTTE vol. 4 (Zondervan, 1997)theological-dictionary
  • TWOT #2321/#2322, ed. Harris, Archer, and Waltke (Moody, 1980)theological-dictionary
  • H. J. Stoebe, "שׁבר", TLOT (Hendrickson, 1997)theological-dictionary
  • E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987), s.v. שָׁבַרdictionary
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989)commentary
  • E. A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible (Doubleday, 1964)commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan, 2001)commentary
  • Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (Norton, 2004)commentary

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

All attested forms of שֶׁבֶר

m s absolute

שֶׁבֶר, שֶּׁבֶר

Gen 42:1, Gen 42:2, Neh 10:31, Gen 43:2, Gen 47:14, Amo 8:5

m s construct

שֶׁבֶר

Gen 42:19

m s construct

שִׁבְרָם

Gen 42:26

m s construct

שִׁבְרוֹ

Gen 44:2