to move back and forth over an area until the whole of it has been covered: to range about, go through, roam
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The picture is coverage, not a journey. Something moves out over an area and works back and forth across it until nothing in it has been missed, which is why the word so often comes with the outer limits of the ground in view: from Dan to Beersheba, from sea to sea, in all the earth.
What changes from verse to verse is the reason for the sweep.
Sometimes it is an assignment: Joab and his officers cross the whole country to count the people in it.
Sometimes it is watchfulness: the eyes of the LORD range through all the earth, and the adversary in Job answers that he has come from going back and forth in it.
Sometimes it is a search: the people go out over the ground to collect the manna, Jerusalem's streets are to be combed for one honest man, and Amos pictures people crossing the world hunting for a word from God and never finding it.
Once it is nothing but grief: the women of Heshbon are told to wail and to rush about among the walls.
None of that is aimless wandering. This is not the word for losing your way (תָּעָה), and it is not quite the word for scouting a place out and bringing back a report (תּוּר) either. It sits between them: deliberate, wide movement whose whole point is that the ground gets covered.
Nuances
1ato travel through a whole territory on an assignment, covering it from one end to the other
TranslatabilityApproximate
2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8
1bto range over an area keeping watch on what is happening in it
2Ch 16:9Job 1:7Job 2:2Zec 4:10
1cto go about over an area looking for something
Num 11:8Jer 5:1Dan 12:4*Amo 8:12
1dto rush about in grief, with no destination in view
Jer 49:3*
2
to row: to drive a boat forward with oars
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
Both places this meaning appears belong to Ezekiel's long lament over the trading city of Tyre, and both use the word as a job title on a crew list. Sidon and Arvad supply the oarsmen while Tyre's own experts do the steering. Later in the same poem the oarsmen become the agents of the disaster: they are the ones who bring the ship out into deep water, where the east wind breaks it.
The standard lexicons treat this as a separate word that only happens to be spelled like the verb for ranging about. Others have connected the two, taking the back and forth stroke of an oar as the same movement. Nothing in Ezekiel turns on that question: these are the men at the oars. The New Testament verb for the same labor (ἐλαύνω) is used the same way of the disciples straining across the lake against the wind.
The Hebrew names the men at the oars in particular, one job on a crew list that also has helmsmen and shipwrights.Ezk 27:8
Both
Both refer to the working crew who move the ship, not to its passengers or its owners.Ezk 27:26
Only mariners
"Mariners" covers any seaman at all, which blurs the division of labor the passage is carefully listing.
How shut differs from similar Hebrew words
תּוּרcrosses ground in order to size it up and bring back a report, as the scouts did in Canaan, so the emphasis falls on the reconnaissance and its findings rather than on the completeness of the sweep.
The point is that the whole of an area gets covered, back and forth from one edge to the other, which is why the outer limits are so often named: Joab's officers cross the entire country from Dan to Beersheba to count the people, and Amos pictures people crossing the world from sea to sea.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8Amo 8:12
It can be a standing patrol kept up for its own sake, with nothing to fetch and nobody to report to: the eyes of the LORD range through all the earth, and the adversary in Job says he has come from going back and forth in it.Job 1:7Job 2:22Ch 16:9Zec 4:10
The movement can be driven by grief rather than by any task, as the women of Heshbon are told to wail and rush about among the walls.Jer 49:3
In Ezekiel's lament over Tyre the word belongs to a ship's crew list and names the men at the oars, so English Bibles render it "rowers".Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Both describe going about over the ground in search of something, whether people spreading out to collect the manna or combing a city's streets, or a wild donkey ranging the hills for anything green to eat.Jer 5:1Num 11:8Job 39:8Num 13:21
Both are used of crossing a whole land end to end on an assignment given by someone in authority: officers sent through all the tribes to count the people, and scouts sent the length of Canaan from the southern desert to the far north.2Sa 24:2Num 13:21Num 13:17
Someone goes through a place in order to size it up and bring back word of what is there, so the findings are the point: the twelve who explore Canaan come back after forty days with a report on the land and its people.Num 13:25Num 13:32Num 14:36
It can mean going on ahead to pick out one particular spot for others to use, as the ark goes before Israel to find them a place to stop and rest.Num 10:33Deu 1:33
It leaves the ground altogether and describes a mind working a question out, as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes sets himself to search out everything done under the sun.Ecc 1:13Ecc 2:3Ecc 7:25
One form of it stopped describing an action and became a name for a class of people, the traveling traders who made their living going from place to place.1Ki 10:152Ch 9:14
It can be turned into a warning about following what attracts you: Israel is told not to go exploring after their own heart and eyes.Num 15:39
תָּעָהwandering that has lost its way, with no route and often no help, whereas ranging back and forth over an area normally has a task or a search behind it.
The movement is done under orders, as part of a job someone was sent out to do: Joab and the officers go through every tribe of Israel to register the people, and return when the count is finished.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8
It can be ranging over ground in order to keep watch on it, which is why it describes the eyes of the LORD going over the whole earth, and why the accuser in Job answers that he has been going back and forth in it.2Ch 16:9Zec 4:10Job 1:7
The point is that the whole extent of the ground gets covered, so the outer limits are often named: from sea to sea and from north to east, every street of a city combed, the ground worked over until the manna is gathered.Amo 8:12Jer 5:1Num 11:8
In Ezekiel's lament over Tyre it names the men at the oars of a ship, a use the other word never carries.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Both describe repeated movement over open country that follows no fixed road, which is why English has to reach for words like "roam" and "wander" for each of them.Job 1:7Job 2:2Gen 37:15Psa 107:4
Both can picture going about after something and coming up empty: people crossing the world hunting for a word from God and not finding it, and thirsty travellers who find no city, and ravens with nothing to eat.Amo 8:12Jer 5:1Psa 107:4Job 38:41
The person has genuinely lost the way and does not know where they are: a mother and her boy adrift in the wilderness, and a young man met in a field who has to be asked what he is looking for.Gen 21:14Gen 37:15
It carries the moral and spiritual picture of straying from God and from what is right, most famously the sheep that has gone off on its own way.Psa 119:176Isa 53:6Ezk 44:10
Someone else can do the leading, so the blame falls on the one pulling people off the road: rulers, false prophets, and idols draw a whole nation off course.Isa 9:16Jer 23:13Hos 4:12
It stretches to the loss of steady footing rather than the loss of a route: priests reeling with drink, and a heart lurching in terror.Isa 28:7Isa 21:4
הָלַךְthe everyday verb for going or walking, which stands beside this one in Job 1:7: that verse names both the covering of the ground and the walking that does it.
Getting the whole of an area covered is the point, so the outer limits of the ground are usually named: officers crossing the country from one end to the other, the eyes of God going over the entire earth, people crossing from one sea to the other.2Sa 24:22Ch 16:9Amo 8:12
The sweep is normally a search or an inspection, working over the ground until something is found or until nothing in it has been missed: combing Jerusalem's streets for one honest man, or spreading out over the ground to collect the manna.Jer 5:1Num 11:8Dan 12:4
It doubles as the word for working a boat's oars, so it can name a ship's rowers outright, as it does on the crew list of Tyre.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Job sets the two side by side doing the same work: the adversary answers that he has come from roving in the earth and from going up and down in it, and neither verb adds anything the other lacks.Job 1:7Job 2:2
Both can describe movement that stays inside an area rather than setting out for a place, which is why older English Bibles reach for "go to and fro" or "walk up and down" for either one.Gen 3:8Num 11:8
This is the plain, everyday verb for going somewhere. Someone sets out for a named place, travels to it, or leaves; the destination is what the word cares about, not how much ground gets crossed on the way.Gen 12:1Gen 12:4Gen 22:3
It turns a whole life into a road that is walked, so it can mean ordering one's days by God's instruction, or living them out in his friendship.Psa 1:1Deu 8:6Gen 5:24Gen 17:1
It reaches far beyond people on their feet: a serpent goes on its belly, rivers run to the sea, and a dying man says gently that he is going the way of all the earth.Gen 3:14Ecc 1:71Ki 2:22Sa 12:23
It can also mean making someone else travel a road, whether guiding them along it or taking them off down it, as when God brings his people through the wilderness.Deu 8:2Deu 8:15Amo 2:10
חָתַרdigs a way through a solid barrier, breaking into one hidden spot rather than covering open ground; the two words meet at sea, where both can describe sailors working a boat through the water.
Covers wide open ground back and forth, crisscrossing a whole country rather than breaking into any one spot.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8Amo 8:12
Often the roaming has a purpose: to search out, inspect, or keep watch, which is why it is used of the eyes of God ranging over the whole earth.2Ch 16:9Zec 4:10Jer 5:1
Describes ordinary going about in the open air on daily errands, such as the people scattering over the ground to gather manna.Num 11:8Job 1:7Job 2:2
Both
Both are used of sailors working a boat through the water, so English Bibles can render either one "row" or "rowers".Jon 1:13Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Means forcing a way through a solid barrier: cutting an opening in the wall of a house to get in or out.Job 24:16Ezk 8:8Ezk 12:5
The work is done out of sight, in the dark or behind cover, so that the hole itself is the point and no one is meant to see it made.Job 24:16Ezk 12:7Ezk 12:12
Can picture burrowing straight down into the depths of the earth as the last imaginable hiding place, and even that is no escape from God.Amo 9:2
נוּעַunsteady, staggering movement, driven rather than directed; it stands beside this word in Amos 8:12, where it supplies the tottering and this word supplies the crossing of the whole world.
Means working back and forth across a whole territory on an assignment until none of it has been missed, which is why the outer limits of the ground are usually named with it.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8
Is the word for ranging over an area to keep watch on what is happening in it, used both of the eyes of the LORD covering all the earth and of the adversary reporting where he has been.2Ch 16:9Zec 4:10Job 1:7Job 2:2
Describes combing open ground for something specific and expecting to collect it: the people going out over the desert floor for manna, or the streets of a city searched for one honest man.Num 11:8Jer 5:1
Doubles as the word for driving a ship forward with oars, so it can name the oarsmen on a crew list, a use that has nothing to do with unsteady motion.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Both can describe people moving out over wide open country rather than making a trip to one destination, which is why they stand side by side in Amos 8:12 for a search that runs from sea to sea and from north to east.Amo 8:12
English Bibles reach for overlapping phrases for both, so in one verse the same people are said to "wander" and to "run to and fro" although two different Hebrew words are at work.Amo 8:12
Describes something shaking or swaying without going anywhere at all: doorframes shuddering at Sinai, trees waving their branches, a nation's idols rocking on their stands, a woman's lips quivering as she prays without sound.Exo 20:18Jdg 9:9Isa 19:11Sa 1:13
Pictures a body that has lost its footing, reeling and staggering the way a drunk cannot hold a straight line, or the earth itself lurching under judgment.Psa 107:27Isa 24:20Isa 29:9
Carries the weight of having no settled place to stop: Cain driven out from the ground, a family reduced to begging for bread, a generation kept moving in the wilderness. The point is homelessness, not the ground covered.Gen 4:12Gen 4:14Psa 109:10Num 32:13
Names a small insulting gesture rather than travel of any kind: shaking the head, or waving the hand, at someone already brought low.2Ki 19:21Psa 22:7Lam 2:15Zep 2:15
Can be done to someone by someone else, so that one person or one hand sets the unsteady motion going in another: driving people from place to place, or shaking a man onto his hands and knees.Psa 59:112Sa 15:20Dan 10:10
shut in the other biblical languages
περιέρχομαιGreek“to go around”the Greek verb for going about from place to place, used of people with no settled home; it carries the movement but not the sense of a territory being covered end to end.
Keeps the outer edges of an area in view, so the movement is measured by how much ground gets covered: Joab's officers work through the whole country from one end to the other, and Amos pictures people crossing the world from sea to sea.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8Amo 8:12
Is used of keeping watch over a territory rather than passing through it, which is why it describes the eyes of the LORD ranging over the whole earth.2Ch 16:9Zec 4:10
Can be a search that combs an area for what is wanted: the people spreading out over the ground to collect the manna, and the hunt up and down Jerusalem's streets for one honest man.Num 11:8Jer 5:1
Carries a second, unrelated meaning about work at sea, naming the men at the oars on a ship's crew list.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Both describe going about among many places instead of traveling to a single destination, which is why English Bibles can render either one "go about".Jer 5:11Ti 5:13
Either word can serve as a lasting description of a person, so that the moving about is the answer to what someone does or where he has been: the traveling exorcists are named by it, and the accuser says only that he has been going back and forth in the earth.Job 1:7Act 19:13
Describes a trade carried on by moving from town to town, so the word becomes the label for the kind of worker: the Jewish exorcists Paul meets are travelers first and exorcists second.Act 19:13
Can mean going round the households of one community, calling in on family after family, so the movement is what carries the talk from one door to the next.1Ti 5:13
Covers being kept on the move because there is nowhere to stay: prophets in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute and driven off, where the point is homelessness rather than how much country they crossed.Heb 11:37
περιπατέωGreek“to walk”the Greek verb for walking about, which 1 Peter uses of the devil prowling for someone to devour, an echo of the roving in Job 1:7; it pictures the walking rather than the coverage of the whole earth.
The point is that a whole territory gets covered from one edge to the other, which is why the outer limits of the ground are usually named right beside it: the length of the country, or the entire earth.2Sa 24:22Ch 16:9Amo 8:12
The sweep is regularly a search or an inspection: going out over the ground to collect the manna, combing a city's streets for one honest man, crossing the world hunting for a word from God.Num 11:8Jer 5:1Amo 8:12
Has a second use with no feet in it at all, naming the work of driving a ship with oars, so it can stand as a job title for the oarsmen on a crew list.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
Both picture an adversary on the move looking for someone, and the New Testament image of the devil going about in search of prey answers the roving the accuser reports in Job when asked where he has been.Job 1:7Job 2:21Pe 5:8
Both describe moving about within an area rather than traveling a straight line to one destination, which is why English Bibles can render either one "go about".2Sa 24:8Mrk 11:27
Names the bodily act of walking on one's feet, so it is the word the Gospels reach for when someone who could not walk gets up and does it, or when a man crosses water on foot.Mat 11:5Mat 14:25Act 3:6
Carries a settled figure for the whole conduct of a life, so that how a person walks is how a person lives: walking in newness of life, walking worthily of one's calling, walking in the light.Rom 6:4Eph 4:11Jn 1:7
Can simply describe going about inside a place with no ground being covered and no errand stated, such as walking in the temple courts or strolling about in fine clothing to be noticed.Jhn 10:23Mrk 11:27Mrk 12:38
περιτρέχωGreek“to run around”the Greek verb for running all around a district, which Mark uses of a crowd hurrying through a whole neighborhood to carry the sick to Jesus; it is one burst of running rather than a standing sweep of territory.
A wide-ranging patrol or survey that sweeps a whole territory, watching and scouting rather than rushing to one spot: the eyes of the LORD ranging over the entire earth.2Ch 16:9
A restless, repeated back-and-forth in search of something or someone, up and down the streets to find a single righteous person.Jer 5:1
Roaming to and fro across the earth as an ongoing activity, the sinister prowling the accuser reports doing when asked where he has been.Job 1:7
Both
Both picture rapid movement that crisscrosses an area, covering ground back and forth rather than traveling a straight line to one destination.Mrk 6:552Sa 24:2
A single burst of literal foot-running by a crowd, all bent on one concrete errand: hurrying through a whole district to carry the sick to a healer.Mrk 6:55
ἐλαύνωGreek“to drive”the Greek verb for driving a boat forward with oars, the counterpart of the rowing meaning rather than the ranging one.
Almost all of its uses have nothing to do with boats: it is the verb for covering a whole stretch of ground back and forth, from one border of the country to the other.2Sa 24:22Sa 24:8Amo 8:12
Carries the idea of watchful patrol, of eyes or of a figure ranging over an area to see what is happening in it.2Ch 16:9Zec 4:10Job 1:7
Describes going out over open ground in search of something, whether food scattered on the desert floor or one honest person in a city's streets.Num 11:8Jer 5:1
Even in its rowing sense it works as a title for the men themselves, so a crew list can name the sailors of Sidon and Arvad simply as the ones at the oars.Ezk 27:8Ezk 27:26
Both
The two words meet at one point only, the Hebrew word's second meaning: driving a boat forward with oars. Its main meaning, ranging over a whole territory, and the Greek word's main meaning, being pushed along by an outside force, do not overlap at all.Ezk 27:8Mrk 6:48
In both, the rowing appears in a scene of dangerous water with the wind working against the boat: an east wind that breaks the ship once the oarsmen have brought it into deep water, and a headwind the disciples fight all night.Ezk 27:26Mrk 6:48
English Bibles can render either one "row" or "rowers", which makes them look like exact counterparts until the rest of each word's range comes into view.Ezk 27:8Jhn 6:19
Its commonest use has nothing to do with oars: it is the plain verb for one force shoving something along, as hard winds push even the largest ships across the water.Jas 3:4
Can be used of a storm carrying off something with no shape or will of its own, mist swept away by a squall.2Pe 2:17
Describes a person driven against his will by a power that has hold of him, when the unclean spirit forced the man out into desolate country.Luk 8:29
Where it does mean rowing, it reports the labor as it happens, the crew straining at the oars through the night and the distance they had made when Jesus came to them.Mrk 6:48Jhn 6:19
What scholars say about shut
The standard lexica divide the material. HALOT and BDB list a verb שׁוּט I, attested in qal, piel, and a single hithpolel form, meaning to go or range about, and a separate שׁוּט II confined to the two participles of Ezekiel 27:8 and 27:26 with the sense to row; DCH follows the same division, and STEPBible's lexical data likewise tags the Ezekiel forms apart from the rest. The piel is generally taken as iterative or intensive rather than as marking a distinct meaning, which is why Jeremiah 5:1,Amos 8:12,2 Chronicles 16:9,Zechariah 4:10 and Daniel 12:4 are grouped with the qal occurrences rather than treated as a separate sense. Jeremiah 49:3 is the sole hithpolel, and its reading is bound up with the disputed בַּגְּדֵרוֹת, taken either as walls or as sheepfolds. For the eyes of YHWH ranging through the earth in 2 Chronicles 16:9 and Zechariah 4:10, commentators (Meyers and Meyers on Zechariah; Japhet on Chronicles) frequently compare the imperial inspectors of the Persian administration, and the same setting is often invoked for the adversary's roving in Job 1:7 and 2:2 (so Clines); the comparison bears on historical background rather than on lexical meaning. Daniel 12:4 is the one occurrence where the sense itself is argued: the verb is read either as aimless rushing about or, on the analogy of Amos 8:12, as ranging in search of knowledge, the latter supported by the parallel clause about knowledge increasing (discussed by Collins). Zimmerli's treatment of the Tyre lament takes the Ezekiel participles as the technical term for oarsmen within a crew list that distinguishes rowers, helmsmen, and shipwrights.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. שׁוט I, שׁוט IIlexicon
BDB, s.v. שׁוּטlexicon
DCH, s.v. שׁוטlexicon
John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia)commentary
Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 (Anchor Bible)commentary
Sara Japhet, I and II Chronicles (Old Testament Library)commentary
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary)commentary
Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel (Hermeneia)commentary
William McKane, Jeremiah (International Critical Commentary)commentary