sakhar

At its heart this verb names a simple transaction: one side pays, and in return another side gives service, labor, or support. It is the ordinary Hebrew word for putting someone on the payroll, and the Bible uses it for a wide spread of arrangements.

The range of what gets hired is broad:

• soldiers and mercenaries, usually to fight a war, as when the Ammonites and later kings buy foreign troops
• workers and craftsmen for a building project, such as the masons and carpenters brought in to repair the temple
• counselors and even a prophet, hired to work against someone, whether the counselors paid to frustrate the returned exiles or Balaam hired to curse Israel

The same verb can be viewed from either end of the deal. Usually it describes an employer doing the hiring, but it can also describe a worker hiring himself out, or earning the wages his labor is owed. The same root gives Hebrew its everyday noun for wages or reward (שָׂכָר) and its word for a hired laborer (שָׂכִיר), so the ideas of working, being paid, and being rewarded all sound together in this family of words.

That tie between hiring and reward surfaces memorably in the story of Leah, who says she has hired her husband for a night with her son's mandrakes. The son she then bears is named Issachar, a name that plays on this very idea of hire and reward.