to lose one's children, or to strip another of theirs: the loss of offspring by death or by miscarriage
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This word names one of the sharpest griefs the Hebrew language points to: the loss of one's children. The same root reaches in two directions at once. A parent suffers it ("why should I be bereaved of both of you in one day?"), and an agent inflicts it ("to make childless"). What holds the uses together is not the direction but the loss itself, always the loss of offspring.
The startling thing is how wide that agent grows as the word travels through the Bible. The one who bereaves is, in turn:
a grieving mother or father in Genesis
a sword or wild beasts in Deuteronomy and Leviticus
God himself, claiming the loss as his own act in Jeremiah and Hosea
even the land, or a single vine, personified as robbing its people of their young
The word also stretches back before birth. It can describe a womb that miscarries, a flock that casts its young too early, or a field that fails to bring forth. So one word covers the whole life of a child, from the womb to the battlefield. It is worth keeping separate from plain barrenness, never conceiving at all (עָקָר); this word is the loss of children one did conceive or bear.
Nuances
1ato be bereaved of one's children: a parent left without offspring by their death
Gen 27:45Gen 43:14 (2×)1Sa 15:33 (2×)
1bto bereave, to make childless: to rob someone of their children by war, wild beasts, famine, or judgment
1cto miscarry, to cast young: a womb, animal, or plant losing its offspring or fruit before term
TranslatabilityApproximate
Gen 31:38Exo 23:26Job 21:10Hos 9:14Mal 3:11*
Disputed
Whether the root's core sense is specifically reproductive loss (miscarriage, barrenness), with the loss of grown children as a metaphorical extension, or whether it covers the loss of children at any life-stage with context supplying the specifics.
majorityThe word covers the loss of children at any age; context decides whether grown offspring or the unborn are in view.; BDB, s.v. שׁכל, pp. 1013b-1014a; HALOT, s.v. שׁכל; H. Schmoldt, "שׁכל šākal," TDOT vol. XIV
minorityThe core is reproductive or prenatal loss, and the bereavement of grown children is a secondary extension.; M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings, AB 11, pp. 37-38
Describes the parent's experience of being robbed of children, the grief of the one left bereaved rather than the child who is lost.Gen 42:36Gen 43:14Jer 15:7
Reaches beyond people to flocks that miscarry or carry safely, and to land or vine made barren of its yield.Gen 31:38Job 21:10Mal 3:11
Both
Both belong to the language of a pregnancy that fails to bring forth a living child, one naming the lost offspring and the other the loss of it.Psa 58:8Hos 9:14
It names the happening, and it faces both ways: a parent suffering the loss of children, or someone stripping another person of theirs.Gen 27:45Gen 42:361Sa 15:33
It can put an agent behind the loss, naming who or what does the robbing: the sword, wild beasts, or God speaking of it as his own act.Deu 32:25Lev 26:22Ezk 5:17Jer 15:7
It reaches back before birth, covering a womb that miscarries, a flock that casts its young early, and even a vine that drops its fruit.Gen 31:38Exo 23:26Job 21:10Mal 3:11
Both
Both are about the loss of offspring one actually had, never about never being able to have any, so neither word means "barren".Isa 49:21Gen 27:45
Both apply to animals as readily as to people, treating a ewe or a cow that loses her young the same way as a mother who loses a child.Sng 6:6Job 21:10
Both belong to the language of judgment and curse, where losing one's children is the punishment announced on a people.Jer 18:21Ezk 14:15Hos 9:12
It describes the one already left in the loss, a settled condition rather than something happening: a mother robbed of her young, named for what she now is.2Sa 17:8Isa 49:21
It carries a fixed picture of a mother bear whose cubs have been taken, the standard measure of blind and dangerous fury.2Sa 17:8Pro 17:12Hos 13:8
Denied of a whole group, it becomes praise for something unbroken: a flock of ewes of which not one has lost her lamb, so no gap breaks the row.Sng 4:2Sng 6:6
It works as a lasting social label for women, standing beside "widow" as the name of a permanent status after a war or a famine.Jer 18:21Isa 49:21
shakhol in the other biblical languages
ἄτεκνοςGreek“childless”the Greek adjective describes the settled state of being childless, where the Hebrew is a dynamic verb for the act or experience of losing one's children
What scholars say about shakhol
The lexica agree on a three-stem profile: an intransitive Qal ("be bereaved of children"), a factitive Piel ("make childless," following Jenni's analysis of the D-stem, adopted by Waltke-O'Connor), and a lone Hiphil participle for a "miscarrying womb" in Hosea 9:14. BDB splits the Piel into "make childless" and an "exhibitive" sub-sense for female or plant subjects; HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius18 instead treat those cases as medial "miscarry / be barren." Schmoldt's TDOT article places the word in the covenant-curse tradition (Leviticus 26:22;Deuteronomy 32:25; with Sefire and Esarhaddon parallels), from which Ezekiel 5:17 and 14:15 draw almost verbatim, and traces its prophetic redeployment as divine judgment (Jeremiah 15:7;Hosea 9:12) and reversal. Blenkinsopp, Westermann, and Goldingay-Payne read Deutero-Isaiah as organizing chapters 47 and 49 as mirror images on this one root: Babylon told she will "know bereavement" in one day, Zion stunned to be surrounded by "the children of her bereavement." Comparative evidence is strong in Central Semitic (Ugaritic ṯkl in the Kirta and Aqhat epics; Arabic thakila with a rich derivational family) but absent in Akkadian, where the similar-looking šakālu is an unrelated variant of šaqālu "to weigh." The Septuagint's near-uniform use of ἀτεκνόω ("make childless") across every genre confirms that ancient readers heard the word as specifically about progeny; only the vine of Malachi 3:11 defeats it, where it reaches for ἀσθενέω ("fail") instead. The most contested text is Ezekiel 36:14, where a metathesis leaves the consonants ambiguous between this root and כשׁל ("stumble"); Zimmerli and Allen emend to this root throughout, while Greenberg and Block defend the Masoretic text more conservatively, all agreeing verse 14 reads "bereave."
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
F. Brown, S. R. Driver, C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), pp. 1013b-1014alexicon
L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, J. J. Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. שׁכלlexicon
D. J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. VIII (Sheffield Phoenix, 2011), s.v. שׁכל Ilexicon
H. Schmoldt, "שׁכל šākal," in Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Bd. VII (Kohlhammer, 1993), cols. 1324-1329; ET TDOT vol. XIV (Eerdmans, 2004)theological-dictionary
E. Jenni, Das hebräische Piʿel (Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1968), pp. 41-52monograph
M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings, AB 11 (Doubleday, 1988), pp. 37-38commentary
J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55, AB 19A (Doubleday, 2002), pp. 279-281, 311-313commentary
H. W. Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1974), pp. 165-169commentary
M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37, AB 22A (Doubleday, 1997), pp. 719-722commentary
W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel 2, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1983), pp. 232-235commentary