to overflow with abundance: to brim past what something can hold, or to make it do so
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This verb turns up only three times in the Hebrew Bible, and the picture is the same every time: something holds more than it can keep in. It is not the ordinary word for filling (מָלֵא), which stands right beside it in all three verses and stops at the brim. This word goes past the brim.
The three appearances are worth seeing together:
In Joel 2:24 the wine vats brim over with new wine and oil, the promised reversal after years of locusts and famine.
In Joel 3:13 those same overflowing vats become an image of judgment, with the nations trodden like grapes in a full winepress.
In Psalm 65:9 God soaks the land itself until it teems with grain.
The overflow is never an accident or a mess. In every case the plenty comes from God's hand, whether as a harvest restored to a starving people or as rain given to a thirsty field. That is what sets this word apart from the verb for flooding and sweeping away (שָׁטַף) and from the verb for giving water to drink (שָׁקָה): one destroys, the other supplies a need, and this one describes plenty spilling past its limits.
The two shades of the word are one idea seen from either end. In Joel something overflows on its own; in the psalm God is the one who makes something overflow. English needs different words for the two, which is why most Bibles read "the vats overflow" in Joel but simply "you water it" in the psalm.
Nuances
1aof wine vats: to brim over with new wine and oil when the harvest is more than the containers can hold
TranslatabilityDirect
Jol 2:24Jol 3:13(4:13)*
1bof land: to soak the ground with water until it teems with plenty
pictures ground soaked until it teems with grain, not merely given a drinkPsa 65:9
Both
both describe supplying land with the water it needs to bear a cropPsa 65:9
Only water
"water" in English sounds like a routine chore, what a gardener does to a plant
How shuq differs from similar Hebrew words
מָלֵאthe ordinary word for being full or filling something up, which stands beside this verb in all three of its verses; fullness reaches the brim, while this word goes past it.
Says the contents go past the brim rather than merely reaching it, which is why Joel can add it after saying the storage is already full: the vats keep running over.Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
Is only ever used of liquid in excess, the new wine and the oil in the vats or water soaking into the ground, and never of grain, people, time or skill.Jol 2:24Psa 65:9
Can picture God drenching dry ground until it has drunk all it can hold, which is watering land rather than topping up a vessel.Psa 65:9
Both
Both describe a supply that has reached its limit, and Joel puts them in one breath as two steps of the same harvest picture: the floors are "full" of grain and the vats "overflow" with wine and oil.Jol 2:24
Both belong to the language of the winepress at vintage, so either word can say what a wine vessel is doing when the crop comes in.Jol 3:13
Both describe plenty that God supplies rather than plenty people manufacture: in one verse he soaks the earth with water and the channel he opens is full of water.Psa 65:9
Marks the completion of a set stretch of time, so a pregnancy that has run its term or a required number of days is spoken of as being "filled".Gen 25:24Gen 29:21Lev 12:4
Covers God filling a person with skill, wisdom and his Spirit so that the worker is equipped for a job.Exo 28:3Exo 31:3Exo 35:31
Works just as readily for a bad content as a good one, so a whole land can be described as full of violence.Gen 6:11Gen 6:13
Describes a person deliberately packing a container up to capacity, such as a waterskin filled at a well or sacks loaded with grain.Gen 21:19Gen 42:25Gen 44:1
Carries the command to spread out and occupy a whole region, filling the seas and the earth with living creatures and people.Gen 1:22Gen 1:28Gen 9:1
Says that a space is occupied wall to wall by something that has settled there, as when the glory of the LORD fills the tent so that no one can enter.Exo 40:34Exo 40:35
שָׁטַףwater that overflows destructively, flooding and sweeping things away; this word's overflowing is plenty, not ruin.
The overflowing is a harvest overflowing: the vats brim past their rims because so much new wine and oil has been pressed into them.Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
Describes water soaking down into ground that welcomes it, as when God drenches the land so the grain will come up, rather than water running off and away.Psa 65:9
Every one of its few uses pictures welcome fullness, so nothing is damaged or carried off when this overflowing happens.Psa 65:9Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
Both
Both describe liquid rising past whatever ought to hold it, the vats at pressing time and a stream running over its banks.Jol 2:24Isa 66:12
Both can picture God giving more than a place can contain: land soaked with rain until it is ready to bear, and streams gushing out of a rock for a whole nation to drink.Psa 65:9Psa 78:20
Names water that ruins what it touches: a torrent washing the soil off the land, hail sweeping a shelter away, a flood rising over someone until it closes over the head.Job 14:19Isa 28:17Psa 124:4
Pictures an invading army as a flood, pouring through one country after another and rolling on past it.Isa 8:8Dan 11:10Dan 11:40
Covers plain everyday washing, where water is deliberately run over something to rinse it clean: a man's hands, a bloodied chariot, blood washed off a body.Lev 15:111Ki 22:38Ezk 16:9
Is the word a person prays against, naming the danger of being swept off one's feet and asking God to hold the water back.Psa 69:15Isa 43:2
Stretches beyond water to any headlong rush, so it can be used of a horse charging into battle.Jer 8:6
שָׁקָהto give water to someone or something, the everyday word for watering flocks and fields; this word describes the soaking that leaves the ground brimming.
Pictures the moment a container cannot hold any more and the contents spill over the rim, used of vats running over with new wine and oil at harvest.Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
Says nothing about anyone receiving a drink. The interest is in how saturated or overfull something has become, whether soaked farmland or a brimming vat.Psa 65:9Jol 3:13
Turns up only in heightened poetry and prophecy that celebrates plenty, never in a plain account of someone fetching water and handing it to people or animals.Psa 65:9Jol 2:24
Both
Both can describe farmland getting so much water that it yields a crop, whether rain soaks it or a farmer brings the water to it.Psa 65:9Deu 11:10
Both are used with God as the one supplying the water, so the resulting abundance reads as his gift rather than a farmer's achievement.Psa 65:9Isa 27:3
Always sets a giver over against a receiver: someone puts the drink within reach of people or flocks, so the word carries an act of service or care.Gen 24:18Gen 29:7Pro 25:21
Ranges over any drink, not only water: wine, milk, and what English Bibles render "vinegar" all appear with it.Gen 19:33Jdg 4:19Psa 69:21
Can be sinister, naming the act of making someone swallow what will harm, test, or shame them: the drink given to a suspected wife, a cup of poisoned water, drink pressed on a neighbor to expose him.Num 5:24Jer 9:15Hab 2:15
Covers deliberate irrigation work, the streams and dug pools that carry water to plantings.Gen 2:10Ecc 2:6
רָוָהto be soaked or to drink one's fill until thirst is gone; this word looks instead at plenty spilling past what the container or the field can hold.
What brims is a container: the wine vats spill over with new wine and oil because the crop has outrun the storage built for it.Jol 2:24Jol 3:13
The limit it passes belongs to the thing holding the plenty, the edge of a vat or the capacity of a field, so it names supply running past a boundary and never a need being felt and met.Jol 2:24Psa 65:9
The picture of running presses works either way: brimming vats announce a restored harvest in one place, and in another the nations are trodden like grapes with the presses going over.Jol 3:13Jol 2:24
Both
Both describe God saturating farmland until it yields a crop, and they stand in back-to-back lines of one psalm: he makes the earth brim with water, then drenches its furrows.Psa 65:9Psa 65:10Isa 55:10
Both reach past the ordinary word for being full: each stands next to a word for filled or satisfied and names the step beyond it, so the threshing floors are full and the vats go over, and the weary soul is filled and the drooping soul is soaked.Jol 2:24Jer 31:25Jer 46:10
Both carry promises of plenty restored after devastation, the vats refilled for a people stripped by locusts and the mourners of the exile refreshed again.Jol 2:24Jer 31:14Jer 31:25
What takes its fill is usually alive: a weary person revived, priests satisfied with rich food, lovers taking their fill of love through the night.Jer 31:25Jer 31:14Pro 5:19Pro 7:18
The limit it passes is an appetite rather than the rim of a vessel, so it marks the point where a thirst has been carried all the way to satisfaction.Psa 36:8Isa 43:24Pro 11:25
Turns to the battlefield, where a sword and the soil under it drink their fill of blood.Isa 34:5Isa 34:7Jer 46:10
Can soak a person in sorrow: a mourner drenching a ruined vineyard with his own tears, or a sufferer made to swallow bitterness like a drink.Isa 16:9Lam 3:15
שׁוֹקthe noun שׁוֹק: a leg or thigh, especially the hind leg portion assigned to the priest from a sacrifice.
שׁוּקthe noun שׁוּק: a street, lane, or marketplace, a late Hebrew word likely borrowed through Aramaic.
shuq in the other biblical languages
ὑπερεκχύνωGreek“to overflow”the Greek word for a measure running over, as in the good measure pressed down and shaken together; it matches this word's overflowing container closely.
What overflows is always liquid: the vats brimming with new wine and oil at harvest, or the ground itself soaked with water until it can hold no more.Jol 2:24Psa 65:9
The overflow can be a threat as readily as a gift: the brimming winepress that marks a restored harvest in one place is, in another, the nations trodden out because their wickedness is great.Jol 3:13Jol 2:24
It can also describe the drenching itself, with God as the one doing it to the land, so the word covers the act of soaking something and not only the state of a container that is running over.Psa 65:9
Both
Both name the moment when what is inside is more than the container can hold, so it spills past the rim, and both English versions reach for the same wording, "overflow" for the vats and "running over" for the measure.Jol 2:24Luk 6:38
In both, the excess traces back to God rather than to human effort: he soaks the land so that it yields more than enough, and the measure poured back into a generous person's lap is what he gives in return.Psa 65:9Luk 6:38
The overflowing thing is a dry measure of grain being handed to a person, not a stored container of liquid: the excess spills over the rim as the measure is tipped into the fold of someone's garment, so the picture is of a giver's open hand rather than of a full storeroom.Luk 6:38
It comes last in a piled-up chain of words, "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over," so the spilling is the deliberate climax of an excessive way of filling something, and not a plain report that a container happens to be full.Luk 6:38
περισσεύωGreek“to exceed”the common Greek word for abounding or having more than enough; it covers the abundance but not the picture of a vessel brimming past its edge.
always keeps a physical container or a field in view, spilling past the edge it was built to hold: vats of new wine and oil, or ground soaked until it teemsJol 2:24Psa 65:9
belongs to farm plenty and rain, so the thing overflowing is always wine, oil, grain, or water, never an inward qualityJol 2:24Psa 65:9
can turn that brimming winepress into a scene of judgment, with the nations trodden like grapesJol 3:13
Both
both say a quantity has gone past the measure that was needed, so there is a genuine surplus and not merely enough: vats holding more new wine than they can keep in, and baskets still full of broken bread after a crowd has eatenJol 2:24Mat 15:37
both trace the abundance back to God as the giver rather than to human effort, and both can be turned around so that God is the one who makes something overflowPsa 65:92Co 9:8
both are commonly rendered "overflow" or "abound" in English Bibles, which is why the two words look like counterparts even though one pictures a vessel and the other a surplus of any kindJol 2:242Co 1:5
names what is left over once a need has been fully met, the surplus gathered up after a crowd has eaten its fillMat 14:20Jhn 6:12
says that people themselves abound, growing rich in love, faith, and good work, so the abundance is one of character rather than produce2Co 8:7Col 2:71Th 4:1
takes things you cannot pour or measure as the subject of the overflowing: grace, comfort, hope, and thanksgivingRom 5:152Co 1:5Rom 15:13
can simply mean surpassing a standard that someone else has set, with no picture of a vessel or a harvest in viewMat 5:20
describes a person's own circumstances of having plenty, set against the experience of going withoutPhp 4:12Luk 12:15
What scholars say about shuq
A rare verb attested three times: Joel 2:24 and Joel 3:13 (Hebrew 4:13) in the causative stem, with the wine vats as subject, and Psalm 65:9 (Hebrew 65:10) in a doubled formation with the earth as object. BDB glosses the root "probably be abundant" and links it to Assyrian šûqu "abundance," explicitly declining the derivation from "run over" that Strong's assumed for the whole group of homographs; HALOT gives "overflow, be abundant" and associates the verbal root with the geminate root שׁקק "run, rush"; DCH, which defines strictly by attested usage, lists the שׁוק homographs as separate entries without unifying them. The Greek tradition divided along the same seam: Joel has ὑπερεκχυθήσονται and ὑπερεκχεῖται ("they overflow"), while Psalm 65:10 has ἐμέθυσας ("you made it drunk"), which pulls the verb toward saturating or irrigating (compare הִשְׁקָה) rather than overflowing. Whether the "rush about" forms at Joel 2:9 and Nahum 2:5 belong to this middle-waw root or to geminate שׁקק is unsettled; most treat them under שׁקק. BDB's Akkadian support for "abundance" is weaker than the very secure sūqu "street" chain behind the homograph noun, and should be treated as probable rather than certain.
Where scholars disagree about shuq
Whether the verb meaning "overflow, be abundant" is an independent word or derives from the idea of running and rushing.
majorityIt is a word of its own, not derived from "run over" and unrelated to the similarly spelled nouns for "street" and "leg"; its nearest outside connection is an Akkadian word for abundance.; BDB, s.v. שׁוק; DCH, s.v. שׁוק
minorityThe verbal root belongs with the geminate root שׁקק "run, rush," so the overflowing is water running over.; HALOT, s.v. שׁוק
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.