shasas

The geminate שָׁסַס and the weak-final שָׁסָה are byforms of a single plunder-root. BDB glosses שָׁסַס as "id." and marks it a parallel form of שׁסה; HALOT and DCH likewise print separate but cross-referenced headwords with identical glosses, and none of the standard lexica posits two semantically distinct roots. The Kethib/Qere split at Jeremiah 30:16 (Kethib שֹׁאֲסַיִךְ, which BDB calls an Aramaic form with intrusive aleph, against Qere שֹׁסַיִךְ) preserves both shapes in a single word and is the decisive internal evidence. The root is a rarer synonym of שָׁלַל and בָּזַז and stands in poetic parallel with them (Isaiah 17:14; 42:22; Jeremiah 30:16). Distribution is concentrated in the Deuteronomistic History, where YHWH is the agent handing Israel to raiders as covenant curse (Judges 2:14; 2 Kings 17:20; so Webb, Cogan and Tadmor), and in the prophets, where the same verb carries the reversal of judgment on the plunderers (Jeremiah 30:16; 50:11; Isaiah 17:14; so Holladay and Lundbom) and eschatological siege (Zechariah 14:2). Three cruxes recur. At Isaiah 42:24 the consonantal לִמְשׁוֹסֶה is read by BDB and older critics (Duhm, Cheyne, Marti) as a Poel participle "plunderer" against the Qere noun מְשִׁסָּה, with the Septuagint's τοῖς προνομεύουσιν favouring the participial reading and the sense scarcely differing either way; at 1 Samuel 14:48 the form שֹׁסֵהוּ is discussed as a possible old plural (Driver, Budde, McCarter); and at Hosea 13:15 the subject of יִשְׁסֶה is debated between the east wind and Assyria by metonymy (Andersen and Freedman against Wolff), though the verb itself is secure. The Septuagint renders the root with προνομεύω and διαρπάζω and their nominal derivatives, the Vulgate with vastare, diripere, and praedari. Etymology is the weak point of the dossier: no secure cognate is attested outside Hebrew (Akkadian šasû "to call" is a homophone, not a cognate, and the Ugaritic proposal is speculative), and the much-discussed link to the Egyptian designation Šꜣsw is contested (see the recorded dispute). A distinct verbal attestation at Qumran or in Ben Sira is unconfirmed; what survives into later Hebrew is the noun מְשִׁסָּה "booty", carried on in the liturgical poem Lekhah Dodi, which adapts Jeremiah 30:16 and preserves the Kethib's aleph.