StrongerBible

shaḥal

שַׁחַל

HebrewH7826“lion, fierce lion”

Appears 7 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 4:10Job 10:16Job 28:8Psa 91:13Pro 26:13Hos 5:14Hos 13:7
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeSHAH-khalnoun

What shaḥal means

lion: the great predator, named by a rare poetic word and almost always invoked for its deadly strength

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Hebrew has an unusually large stock of words for the lion, and this is one of the rarest. It turns up only seven times, every time in poetry. Six of those seven times another lion word stands right beside it, and that is how we know what it means. In Proverbs 26:13 it is matched with the everyday word for lion (אַרְיֵה); in Job 4:10 it sits between the roaring of the lion and the teeth of the young lions (כְּפִיר); in Hosea 5:14 the young lion is its partner again.

The old habit of ranking Hebrew's lion words by the animal's age or size, with this one supposedly a middle-sized lion, is a medieval guess that scholars have set aside. The words work as poetic partners, chosen for variety and sound, and what they carry is not zoology but menace.

What the word actually does in each place is nearly always figurative:

  • God announcing that he will come at his own people like a lion and tear them (Hosea 5:14; Hosea 13:7)
  • Job protesting that God stalks him the way a lion stalks its prey (Job 10:16)
  • Eliphaz picturing violent people as lions whose roar God cuts off (Job 4:10)
  • a psalm promising that the protected person will walk over lion and snake alike (Psalm 91:13)

Only Proverbs 26:13 leaves the animal on the ground, and even there it is a lion the lazy man has invented so that he need not go out.

Two verses are genuinely argued over. In Psalm 91:13 and Job 28:8 the word standing beside this one is a snake rather than a lion, and the oldest translations into Greek, Latin and Syriac put "asp" or "serpent" here instead of "lion." Most scholars today read "lion" in both places, but the ancient hesitation is real, and one recent study argues that Job 28:8 was meant to summon a creature that is both at once, fit for the wild rim of the world.

Nuances

1aa lion as a real animal, a danger to anyone out on the road
TranslatabilityDirect
Pro 26:13
1bGod pictured as a lion who hunts his own people and tears them
Job 10:16Hos 5:14Hos 13:7
1cviolent people pictured as lions, whose roar God silences
Job 4:10
1da lion among the deadly creatures the protected person walks over unharmed
Psa 91:13
Psa 91:13

Whether the word names a lion or a snake in this verse. The four creatures named interlock two lion words with two snake words, and the ancient translators divided: the Greek, Latin and Syriac all render a serpent term, while the Aramaic keeps a lion.

  • majorityA lion. The ancient versions that read a snake here are either mistaken or translating interpretively, and the verse belongs to the widespread picture of the king or the righteous one treading down wild beasts.; Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger Than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 212; Fribourg: Academic Press / Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005), 324; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100 (Hermeneia, 2005), on Psalm 91
  • minorityThe ancient serpent rendering is an interpretation rather than an error, and one the language allowed, since lion vocabulary and serpent vocabulary overlapped across the Semitic languages.; Scott C. Jones, Lions, Serpents, and Lion-Serpents in Job 28:8 and Beyond, Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 663-686
1ethe beast of the far wild places, where no one has ever walked
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
Job 28:8
Job 28:8

Which creature the verse names. It is the only occurrence with no lion word alongside it, its partner term is used elsewhere of the sea dragon's underlings, and the ancient translators split, with the Greek, Syriac, Latin and one Targum reading a lion while another Targum reads a serpent.

  • majorityA lion, as in every other occurrence of the word.; Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger Than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 212, 2005), 324; Koehler, Baumgartner and Stamm, HALOT, 4:1461, s.v. שַׁחַל
  • minorityA serpent, since a lion does not suit the remote and trackless setting the poem describes.; Sigmund Mowinckel, שחל, in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver, ed. D. Winton Thomas and W. D. McHardy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963); Marvin H. Pope, Job (Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed., 1973), on Job 28:8; Lester L. Grabbe, Comparative Philology and the Text of Job: A Study in Methodology (SBL Dissertation Series 34, 1977)
  • minorityDeliberately both at once, a lion-serpent belonging to the chaotic edge of the world, which is why the ancient translators divided.; Scott C. Jones, Lions, Serpents, and Lion-Serpents in Job 28:8 and Beyond, Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 663-686

What scholars say about shaḥal

The standard lexica gloss שַׁחַל "lion (poetry)" (BDB; HALOT 4:1461; DCH), and the gloss rests on internal biblical usage rather than on comparative philology. In six of the seven occurrences the noun stands in poetic parallel with an uncontested lion term (אַרְיֵה and כְּפִיר at Job 4:10; אֲרִי at Prov 26:13; כְּפִיר at Hos 5:14 and Ps 91:13; נָמֵר, דֹּב and לָבִיא at Hos 13:7 to 8), and the rabbinic tradition preserved at b. Sanhedrin 95a already lists שַׁחַל among six Hebrew names for the lion. The etymology, by contrast, is unrecoverable. The older derivation from a lost root meaning "to roar" (Gesenius-Buhl, BDB, after Noeldeke) depended on Akkadian šaḫālu, now understood as "to filter," and on Arabic saḥala "to pare, file"; Lipinski's revival of a sharpening etymology (שַׁחַל as "the grinder of teeth," keyed to Job 4:10) is rejected by both Jones and Strawn. Kaplan's dissertation concluded that no attested Semitic root yields "lion" for the noun, and HALOT's treatment of it as a primary noun of unknown origin is the honest position. Mowinckel argued (1922, expanded 1963) that the word originally denoted a mythical serpent-dragon and only secondarily became a poetic lion term; Strawn judges this "intriguing but invalid" and Charlesworth excludes the noun from Hebrew serpent vocabulary, so the thesis is rejected by the field. Jones's 2011 JBL study nevertheless rehabilitates Mowinckel's underlying observation that lion and serpent vocabulary bleed into one another across Semitic (לָבִיא and Akkadian labbu, used of a mythological serpent in the Labbu myth; לַיִשׁ and Akkadian nēšu, applied to a serpent in Gilgamesh XI), and argues that Job 28:8 conjures a composite lion-serpent suited to the chaotic periphery, its partner בְנֵי־שָׁחַץ being the phrase used at Job 41:26 of Leviathan's underlings. The ancient versions divide exactly where the parallelism is ambiguous: "lion" or "panther" wherever a lion word is the partner, but ἀσπίς in LXX Ps 90:13 and a serpent term in the Vulgate and Peshitta at Ps 91:13, and חִוְיָא in Targum 1 to Job 28:8 against λέων in the Old Greek there. On function, Strawn's monograph concludes that the force of leonine imagery across the Hebrew Bible and its ancient Near Eastern setting depends on the power and threat the predator represents rather than on any taxonomy of age, sex or species, and that the medieval age-class scheme (Rashi and Kimchi grading אֲרִי, שַׁחַל and כְּפִיר by size, already rejected by Abarbanel) should be abandoned. Strawn classifies the noun's referents as enemy or wicked (Job 4:10), deity as hunter or judge (Job 10:16; Hos 5:14; 13:7), and hostile chaos-beast (Ps 91:13).

Where scholars disagree about shaḥal

Whether the word belongs to Hebrew's lion vocabulary alone, or originally named a serpent or dragon and only later became a poetic word for the lion. The sense "lion" rests on the word's poetic pairings rather than on any recoverable etymology, and that gap is what keeps the question alive.

  • majorityA poetic word for the lion and nothing else. The comparative Semitic evidence for a serpent sense is inconclusive, so the meaning has to be established from Hebrew usage, which is uniformly leonine.; Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger Than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 212, 2005), 324; James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized (Yale University Press, 2010); Koehler, Baumgartner and Stamm, HALOT, 4:1461, s.v. שַׁחַל
  • minorityOriginally a mythical serpent or dragon, taken up secondarily as a term for the lion because the two beasts were fused in ancient imagination and art.; Sigmund Mowinckel, שחל, in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver, ed. D. Winton Thomas and W. D. McHardy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963)
  • minorityLexically a lion, but close enough to serpent vocabulary across the Semitic languages that a poet could summon both at once, which is what the divided ancient translations reflect.; Scott C. Jones, Lions, Serpents, and Lion-Serpents in Job 28:8 and Beyond, Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 663-686
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, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. שַׁחַלlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner and Stamm, HALOT, 4:1461 and 4:1463, s.v. שַׁחַל and שַׁחַץlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. שחלlexicon
  • Brent A. Strawn, What Is Stronger Than a Lion? Leonine Image and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 212; Fribourg: Academic Press / Goettingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005), esp. 324monograph
  • Scott C. Jones, Lions, Serpents, and Lion-Serpents in Job 28:8 and Beyond, Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 663-686article
  • Sigmund Mowinckel, שחל, in Hebrew and Semitic Studies Presented to Godfrey Rolles Driver, ed. D. Winton Thomas and W. D. McHardy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963)article
  • James H. Charlesworth, The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol Became Christianized (Yale University Press, 2010)monograph
  • Michael Kaplan, The Lion in the Hebrew Bible: A Study of a Biblical Metaphor (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 1981)dissertation
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary 17, 1989), on Job 4:10-11 and 10:16commentary
  • Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job (Old Testament Library, 1985), on Job 4 and 28commentary
  • Marvin H. Pope, Job (Anchor Bible 15, 3rd ed., 1973), on Job 28:8commentary
  • Lester L. Grabbe, Comparative Philology and the Text of Job: A Study in Methodology (SBL Dissertation Series 34, 1977)monograph
  • Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100 (Hermeneia, 2005), on Psalm 91commentary
  • Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia, 1974), on Hosea 5:14 and 13:7commentary
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible 24, 1980), on Hosea 5:14 and 13:7commentary
  • A. A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (International Critical Commentary, 1997), on Hosea 5:14 and 13:7commentary
  • Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Anchor Yale Bible 18B, 2009), on Proverbs 26:13commentary
  • Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15-31 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 2005), on Proverbs 26:13commentary

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

All attested forms of שַׁחַל

m s absolute

שָׁחַל, שַׁחַל, שַּׁחַל

Job 4:10, Job 28:8, Hos 13:7, Psa 91:13, Pro 26:13, Job 10:16, Hos 5:14