StrongerBible

shavah

שָׁוָה

HebrewH7737“equal, compare, ...”

Appears 21 times · tap a cell to see the verses

2Sa 22:34Est 3:8Est 5:13Est 7:4Job 33:27Psa 16:8Psa 18:33(34)Psa 21:5(6)Psa 89:19(20)Psa 119:30Psa 131:2Pro 3:15Pro 8:11Pro 26:4Pro 27:15Isa 28:25Isa 38:13Isa 40:25Isa 46:5Lam 2:13Hos 10:1
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradeshah-VAHverb

What shavah means

1

to be or make even: to be equal or comparable to something, worth as much as it, or to level a thing out.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its root this word pictures bringing two things onto the same level, so that they weigh the same or match each other. From that one picture grows a wide range of uses. Most often it means to be equal or comparable: nothing you could desire is worth as much as wisdom (Proverbs 3:15; 8:11), and God asks to whom he could possibly be compared (Isaiah 40:25). When people liken one thing to another, or measure one against another, this is the word for it (Lamentations 2:13; Isaiah 46:5).

The same word keeps its concrete, physical sense too. A farmer levels the surface of his plowed field before sowing (Isaiah 28:25), and a person can level and settle a restless heart until it is calm, like a small child quieted at its mother's side (Psalm 131:2). The image is always the same: something brought to an even, settled state.

One branch of the word is a set phrase that shows up only in the later books. To say a thing is not worth it to someone, or brings no profit, Esther and the book of Job use this verb to weigh cost against benefit (Esther 3:8; 5:13; 7:4; Job 33:27). That accounting turn of phrase is a mark of the Persian-era Hebrew in which those passages were written, echoing the administrative speech of the empire.

Nuances

1ato be equal or comparable to something; to be on a par with it in worth or nature.
Pro 3:15Pro 8:11Pro 26:4Isa 40:25
1bto be worth it, to bring profit; used in the set phrase that weighs whether something is worthwhile for a person.
Est 3:8Est 5:13Est 7:4Job 33:27
1cto liken or compare one thing to another; to treat as equal.
Isa 46:5Lam 2:13
1dto be alike, to match one another.
Pro 27:15
1eto make level or smooth, as a farmer evens out a plowed field.
Isa 28:25
1fto compose, still, or calm; to bring a restless heart to an even, settled state.
Psa 131:2Isa 38:13
2

to set, place, or lay something in position, or lay it upon someone.

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

In a small cluster of poems this verb means simply to set, place, or lay. It works as a poetic stand-in for the ordinary everyday word for putting something somewhere. The psalmist sets the LORD constantly before himself (Psalm 16:8) and keeps God's just decrees in front of him as a guide (Psalm 119:30). God lays splendor and majesty upon the king (Psalm 21:5) and lays help upon a chosen champion (Psalm 89:19).

The range runs from placing an object to bestowing something on a person. It also covers making a person surefooted, as when God sets one's feet firm and swift like a deer's (2 Samuel 22:34; Psalm 18:33), and it lies behind the difficult line in Hosea where a lush vine yields, or sets forth, its fruit (Hosea 10:1).

This placing sense is not a late borrowing. It turns up in some of the oldest Hebrew poetry, and it shares the same underlying picture as the word's other meaning: to place something is to set it down onto a level surface. Whether the word carries this sense or the sense of being equal is almost always clear from the sentence itself.

Nuances

2ato set or place something before oneself; to keep it constantly in view.
Psa 16:8Psa 119:30
2bto lay or bestow something upon a person.
Psa 21:5(6)Psa 89:19(20)
2cto set a person's feet firm and sure, making them like a deer's.
2Sa 22:34Psa 18:33(34)
2dto yield or set forth (fruit).
CertaintyContested
Hos 10:1
Hos 10:1

How to read the verb in Hosea 10:1, where Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields fruit for itself.

  • majorityThe "produce, set forth" sense: the vine puts out its fruit. This is the reading of the standard lexicons and most commentators.; Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. shavah II; Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, Anchor Bible 24 (1980); A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea, ICC (1997)
  • minorityThe "be made equal, correspond" sense: the fruit was made to match Israel. Jerome's Vulgate renders it "fructus adaequatus est ei".; Jerome, Vulgate (Hosea 10:1)

What scholars say about shavah

The standard working lexicons since BDB (1906) print two homonyms indexed to H7737: shavah I, "be equal, resemble, be worth" (Qal, Piel, Hiphil, and the rare Nithpael of Proverbs 27:15, often emended to a Niphal after Gesenius), and shavah II, a transitive Piel "set, place, lay upon" that functions as a synonym of sim (H7760) and shit (H7896). HALOT and DCH inherit the split; HALOT, following Wagner's Aramaismen no. 296, tags II as Aramaic-influenced, and TWOT keeps two numbers (2342, 2343). Gesenius's Thesaurus, by contrast, derived all the senses from a single primitive "be or make level, even," and comparative Semitics has largely returned to that unified picture: Arabic sawiya, sawwa, and istawa, Syriac shwa, Jewish Aramaic (Sokoloff, Jastrow), and Geez all attest one polysemous root whose base is "level" and whose branches run to "equal, worth" and to "arrange, place upon" (Lane; Payne Smith; Leslau). Isaiah 28:25, where the Piel plainly means "level the surface of a field" (so Blenkinsopp, Wildberger), supplies that physical primitive inside Hebrew itself. The "be worth to X" idiom of Esther 3:8; 5:13; 7:4 and Job 33:27 satisfies Hurvitz's criteria for a Late Biblical Hebrew feature reinforced by Imperial Aramaic contact (Berlin, Levenson). For the placement cluster in Psalms 16, 21, 89 and 2 Samuel 22:34, Dahood (Anchor Bible Psalms) argued a Ugaritic loan shwy "to place," a proposal decisively rejected by Rainey, Emerton, Craigie, and Barr (who made it a textbook case of the abuse of comparative philology); the consensus keeps Dahood's semantic result "set, lay upon" while treating it as a native Northwest Semitic reflex, not a loan. The Septuagint's split renderings confirm the polysemy from the outside: tithemi plus a preposition for the placement verses, axios and antaxios for the worth verses, and homalizo for "level" at Isaiah 28:25.

Where scholars disagree about shavah

Whether this is one polysemous root or two unrelated verbs that happen to be spelled the same. The standard working lexicons print two: one meaning "be equal, resemble, be worth," the other "set, place, lay." Comparative Semitic study argues both grew from a single root meaning "be or make level," whose branches (leveling one thing against another becomes being equal, setting one thing down onto a level becomes placing upon) are transparent in Arabic, Syriac, and Aramaic.

  • majorityTwo separate verbs (homonyms), divided chiefly on syntactic grounds within Hebrew: the placement verb always takes prepositions like "upon" and behaves like the ordinary verb for putting, while the comparison verb ranges more widely.; Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. shavah I, shavah II; Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (1994-2000), s.v. shavah I, shavah II; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 8 (2011); Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (1980), 2342, 2343
  • minorityOne polysemous root meaning to be or make level, from which both sense-clusters descend; the split in Hebrew is a lexicographers' convenience, not a historical fact, and Aramaic contact widened but did not create the gap.; Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus (1829-1858), s.v. shavah; Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (1863-1893), s.v. s-w-y; Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geez (1987), s.v. swy
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

  • Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), s.v. shavah I, shavah IIlexicon
  • Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, Johann Jakob Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. M. E. J. Richardson (Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. shavah I, shavah IIlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 8 (2011), s.v. shavah I, shavah IIlexicon
  • R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Bruce K. Waltke, eds., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (1980), 2342, 2343dictionary
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus criticus linguae Hebraeae et Chaldaeae Veteris Testamenti (1829-1858), s.v. shavahlexicon
  • Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (1863-1893), s.v. s-w-ylexicon
  • J. Payne Smith (Margoliouth), A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (1903), s.v. shwalexicon
  • Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (2002), s.v. shwylexicon
  • Wolf Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geez (1987), s.v. swylexicon
  • Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I-III, Anchor Bible 16, 17, 17A (1966-1970)commentary
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (1968)monograph
  • Anson F. Rainey, review of Ugaritica V, Journal of the American Oriental Society 94 (1974): 184-194journal
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, Anchor Bible 19 (2000)commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Yale Bible 18A (2000)commentary
  • Adele Berlin, Esther, JPS Bible Commentary (2001)commentary
  • Avi Hurvitz, A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew, VTSup 160 (2014)monograph

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

All attested forms of שָׁוָה

piel perfect 1cs

שִׁוִּיתִי

Psa 16:8, Psa 89:19, Psa 119:30, Psa 131:2, Isa 38:13

qal participle m s absolute

שֹׁוֶה

Est 3:8, Est 5:13, Est 7:4

piel participle m s absolute

מְשַׁוֶּה

2Sa 22:34, Psa 18:33

qal imperfect 3mp

יִשְׁווּ

Pro 3:15, Pro 8:11

hiphil conjunctive-imperfect 2mp

וְתַשְׁווּ

Isa 46:5

hiphil imperfect 1cs

אַשְׁוֶה

Lam 2:13

nithpael perfect 3ms

נִשְׁתָּוָה

Pro 27:15

piel imperfect 2ms

תְּשַׁוֶּה

Psa 21:5

piel imperfect 3ms

יְשַׁוֶּה

Hos 10:1

piel perfect 3ms

שִׁוָּה

Isa 28:25

qal conjunctive-imperfect 1cs

וְאֶשְׁוֶה

Isa 40:25

qal imperfect 2ms

תִּשְׁוֶה

Pro 26:4

qal perfect 3ms

שָׁוָה

Job 33:27