shuq

שׁוּק

HebrewH7784“street”

Appears 4 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Pro 7:8Ecc 12:4Ecc 12:5Sng 3:2

Root family

shuqשׁוּקto overflow3H7783

Word studyResearch-gradeSHOOKnoun

What shuq means

a street: the ordinary lane of a town, the narrow public way running between the houses rather than an open square

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is the plain word for a town's street: the lane you walk down, the space on the far side of a doorway, the public way where anyone can see you. It appears only four times in the Hebrew Bible, and every one of them is an everyday scene:

a young man strolling past the corner where a waiting woman lives (Proverbs 7:8),
doors shut fast on the street as the sound of the grinding dies away (Ecclesiastes 12:4),
mourners going round and round outside a house of the dead (Ecclesiastes 12:5),
a woman up in the night, combing the lanes for the man she loves (Song of Songs 3:2).

Hebrew has more than one word for where people are once they step out of the house, and they are not interchangeable. The broad open place (רְחוֹב) is the plaza just inside the town gate, where elders sat and crowds gathered. Another word (חוּץ) simply means outside, out of doors, as opposed to indoors. This word is the narrow one, the lane between the buildings, and the Song sets the pair in a single line: the woman searches the lanes and then the squares, two different kinds of place, both worth checking.

The word has a travel history of its own. Hebrew seems to have taken it from Aramaic, which had it from the language of Babylon, where the noun for a street was built on a verb meaning "to be narrow." That is why it surfaces only in the latest wisdom and poetry of the Hebrew Bible and then becomes commonplace afterward: in the Hebrew of the rabbis it is simply the word for the market, with its market days and market prices, and the same word passed into Arabic and eventually into English as "souk."

Pro 7:8Ecc 12:4Ecc 12:5Sng 3:2

What shuq does not mean

Three things to keep straight about this small word:

Older popular reference tools file it with a rare verb for overflowing (שׁוּק) and with the noun for a leg (שׁוֹק), as though a street were named for being run over and a leg for running. The critical lexicons keep the three apart: they are separate words that happen to be spelled alike, and this one is a borrowed word for a street.
It is not the broad open square (רְחוֹב), and it is not the general word for outdoors (חוּץ). Reading "street" flatly in every case loses the contrast the Song of Songs draws when it names the lanes and the squares in one breath.
The bustling market that the modern word "souk" brings to mind belongs to later Hebrew, not to these four verses, where the word is simply a street. And although the word really does look late, one word cannot date a book by itself. Scholars who argue that Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs come from a late period count it as one thread in a much larger rope, while others answer that a single borrowed word can slip into an older text as it is copied.

What scholars say about shuq

The consonantal form שׁוק covers several unrelated lexemes, and the critical lexica list them as separate entries rather than deriving them from a single root: the verb "overflow, be abundant" (Joel 2:24; 4:13 [3:13]; Psalm 65:10 [65:9]), the noun שׁוֹק "leg, thigh," and this noun שׁוּק "street." The Strong's chain ("run over" > "overflow" > "street" > "leg") is folk etymology and is rejected by BDB, HALOT and DCH; the only defensible internal link is BDB's note that the geminate root שׁקק "run, run about, rush" is "apparently akin to √ I. שׁוק, whence שׁוֺק." For the street noun the philological chain is well established: Sumerian e-sir₂, equated with Akkadian sūqu "street, alley" (with diminutive sūqāqu) and generally traced to sâqu "to be(come) narrow" (CAD; AHw), then Aramaic and Syriac šūqā (שׁוּקָא, ܫܘܩܐ), whence Hebrew שׁוּק and Arabic sūq. BDB labels the Hebrew word "street (Aramaic; see √)" while still deriving it from the "run over" idea; HALOT compares Aramaic and Akkadian sūqu, and the prevailing view is that the word entered Hebrew through Aramaic rather than by direct Akkadian loan or shared Semitic inheritance. Semantically it is distinguished from רְחוֹב, the broad plaza inside the gate (from רחב "be wide"), and from חוּץ, the generic "outside"; Song of Songs 3:2 sets שְׁוָקִים in parallel with רְחֹבוֹת, which secures the contrast between narrow lane and open square, matching the Akkadian derivation from "be narrow." The distribution (Proverbs 7:8; Ecclesiastes 12:4, 5; Song of Songs 3:2, then Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ubiquitously in Mishnaic Hebrew and Targumic Aramaic) makes the word a standard exhibit in the dating debates over Qohelet and Song of Songs: C. L. Seow marshals such Aramaic-flavored vocabulary for a Persian-period Qohelet, and the Persian loanword פַּרְדֵּס (Song 4:13; Ecclesiastes 2:5; Nehemiah 2:8) supplies a firm late anchor, but the methodological dispute between Avi Hurvitz, who defends accumulated late features as datable evidence, and Ian Young, Robert Rezetko and Martin Ehrensvärd, who hold that such features cannot securely date a text, means the lexeme functions as corroborating rather than decisive evidence. The Septuagint renderings vary with context (ἀγορά, πλατεῖα, ἔξοδος), reflecting the same street versus square ambiguity carried by the Hebrew synonyms. The exact Roman-numeral assignments in HALOT and DCH should be checked against print editions.

Where scholars disagree about shuq

Whether the noun שׁוּק "street" is an independent loanword that reached Hebrew through Aramaic, or a Hebrew formation from the root meaning "run over."

majorityAn independent borrowing: the word came into Hebrew from Aramaic šūqā, itself from Akkadian sūqu "street, alley" (from sâqu "to be narrow"), and has no derivational connection to the Hebrew verb "overflow" or to שׁוֹק "leg."; HALOT, s.v. שׁוק; DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. שׁוּק; The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), s.v. sūqu
minorityA Hebrew formation: BDB files the street noun under the root √ I שׁוק "run over," a street being what is run over, while at the same time labelling the word Aramaic.; BDB, s.v. שׁוּק

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

BDB, s.v. שׁוּקlexicon
HALOT, s.v. שׁוקlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. שׁוּקlexicon
The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), s.v. sūqulexicon
Wolfram von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw), s.v. sūqulexicon
C. L. Seow, "Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of Qohelet," Journal of Biblical Literature 115/4 (1996) 643-666article
C. L. Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible)commentary
Avi Hurvitz, "The Historical Quest for Ancient Israel and the Linguistic Evidence of the Hebrew Bible: Some Methodological Observations," Vetus Testamentum 47 (1997) 301-315article
Ian Young, Robert Rezetko and Martin Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (London: Equinox, 2008)monograph

shuq

What shuq means

a street: the ordinary lane of a town, the narrow public way running between the houses rather than an open square

What scholars say about shuq

Where scholars disagree about shuq

Sources

All attested forms of שׁוּק

m s absolute

m p absolute

What shuq means

a street: the ordinary lane of a town, the narrow public way running between the houses rather than an open square

Related words

The English words used to translate shuq

How shuq differs from similar Hebrew words

shuq in the other biblical languages

What scholars say about shuq

Where scholars disagree about shuq

Sources

All attested forms of שׁוּק

m s absolute

m p absolute