to treat as detestable: to brand something loathsome and push it away in disgust
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This verb is the action behind a small family of Hebrew words for what is loathsome. It is not simply a feeling. It is something a person does to a thing: mark it as repulsive, refuse it, and keep clear of it. Almost every use is a command, and almost all of them belong to the laws about clean and unclean food, where the creature being refused is itself called a detestable creature (שֶׁקֶץ).
The commands run in two directions, and the second is the sharp one:
Israel is told to treat certain creatures and objects as repulsive and refuse them (Leviticus 11:11;Leviticus 11:13).
Israel is warned not to make itself repulsive by taking those creatures in (Leviticus 11:43;Leviticus 20:25).
So the disgust can rebound on the person. Eating what God has ruled loathsome does not only break a rule; it makes the eater loathsome.
Outside the food laws the verb is used of an idol carried home from a conquered land, where it is doubled for force and paired with another verb of revulsion (תָּעַב): the Israelite is to "utterly detest" and "utterly abhor" the thing (Deuteronomy 7:26). Its one use outside law is a denial. In Psalm 22:24 the sufferer says God has not "despised" or "abhorred" the misery of the afflicted. The one thing a person might expect God to find repulsive and turn from, he does not push away.
Nuances
1ato refuse something as unclean and treat it with open disgust
TranslatabilityApproximate
Lev 11:11Lev 11:13Deu 7:26 (2×)
1bto make yourself loathsome, bringing defilement on yourself
Lev 11:43*Lev 20:25*
1cto look on someone with contempt and turn away from them
can turn back on the person, so that whoever takes in the loathsome thing becomes loathsomeLev 11:43
Both
both name a strong revulsion that turns away from its objectPsa 22:24
Only abhor
in English abhorring is a settled attitude of the heart, which leaves out the practical refusal the Hebrew asks for
“make detestable”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“regard as detestable”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How shaqats differs from similar Hebrew words
תַּעָבthe wider verb for abhorring, used of moral, social, and even physical revulsion; this verb is narrower and stays close to the laws that rule a creature or object off-limits
This is the word of the food rules. Almost every use of it tells Israel which creatures to shove away from the table: water creatures without fins and scales, a named list of birds, and animals that crawl along the ground.Lev 11:11Lev 11:13Lev 20:25
The command is turned back on the people rather than aimed at the creature. Israel is told not to make itself loathsome by what it eats, so the harm lands on the eater, and the very next line adds that they would be making themselves unclean.Lev 11:43Lev 20:25
Both
The one verse where both appear stacks them side by side and doubles each for force: the plunder of idols is to be utterly detested and utterly loathed, because it is under a ban. Neither word means mild dislike; both call for a rejection complete enough that the thing is never carried through the door.Deu 7:26
Both can be said of God himself turning away from someone. One psalm says his anger flared and he loathed his own people; another insists that he did not shove aside the misery of a suffering man but listened when he cried out. The same reaction is in view, affirmed in the first case and denied in the second.Psa 22:24Psa 106:40
It reaches into moral life, where the other word never goes. What is loathed here is wrongdoing and the people who practice it: the LORD loathes the man of blood and deceit, a psalmist says he hates and loathes lying, city officials loathe fair judgment and bend everything straight out of shape, and a court hates anyone who tells the truth.Psa 5:6Psa 119:163Mic 3:9Amo 5:101Ch 21:6
It can name the doing rather than the feeling, so that a person behaves in a way that makes him revolting. A king acted revoltingly by trailing after idols, a city fouled her own beauty and outdid her neighbors in what she did, and fools are said to have made their dealings rotten.1Ki 21:26Ezk 16:25Ezk 16:52Psa 14:1Psa 53:1
It carries a social sting: a person can be the loathed one, pushed away by the people around him. Close friends turn from a suffering man, a mocking crowd keeps its distance and spits, a servant is loathed by a whole nation, a dead king is flung out like a branch nobody wants, and even a man's own clothes are pictured recoiling from him.Job 19:19Job 30:10Isa 49:7Isa 14:19Job 9:31Job 15:16
Because it names a feeling a person can be held responsible for, it can also be forbidden. Israel is told not to loathe an Edomite, since he is a brother, and not to loathe an Egyptian, since Israel once lived as a guest in his land.Deu 23:7
Even where it does touch food, the disgust is a body's and not a rule's. Sick people are described as unable to stand the sight of any food at all, which is the opposite of a list of creatures set off limits.Psa 107:18
שֶׁקֶץthe noun of this same root: the detestable creature itself, the thing ruled off-limits, where this word is the act of treating it that way
Names something a person does rather than a class of things, and the damage falls on the person: Israel is warned not to make itself loathsome by what it eats or touches.Lev 11:43Lev 20:25
Reaches past the food rules to anything placed under a ban, so a captured idol is to be loathed and destroyed instead of kept for its metal.Deu 7:26
Can describe how someone regards a person, not an animal, which is why a psalm can insist that God did not turn away in disgust from a sufferer.Psa 22:24
Both
The food laws set them in a single sentence, one naming the creature as a loathsome thing and the other commanding Israel to treat it as loathsome, so together they state the ruling and the required response.Lev 11:11Lev 11:13
Both belong to the vocabulary of revulsion rather than of category alone: they sit beside the plain word for "unclean" but add the recoil that the bare label does not require.Lev 11:12Lev 11:43
Labels standing categories of creatures rather than a reaction to them: water creatures without fins and scales, winged swarming things, and whatever moves along the ground.Lev 11:10Lev 11:12Lev 11:20Lev 11:23Lev 11:41Lev 11:42
Attaches to flesh in the sacrificial rules, where simply eating what carries the label leaves a person guilty and cut off.Lev 7:21
Extends to the props of forbidden worship, covering both what people eat in pagan rites and the animal figures carved on a temple wall.Isa 66:17Ezk 8:10
שִׁקּוּץthe other noun of this root, aimed at worship: it brands idols and pagan equipment as loathsome, where this verb commands the refusing
It is an instruction about what people are to do rather than a label for a thing. Israel is told to treat certain creatures as loathsome and refuse them at the table.Lev 11:11Lev 11:13
It can turn back on the person who acts, so that eating what is off-limits makes the eater loathsome. The disgust lands on the one who broke the rule, not only on what was eaten.Lev 11:43Lev 20:25
It also describes how one person regards another, and it can be denied outright: the psalmist's comfort is that God did not look at the sufferer with contempt and turn away.Psa 22:24
Both
Both belong to the same family of revulsion and both land on foreign gods. One brands the idol and its equipment as a thing to be loathed; the other orders the reaction, telling Israel to loathe the idol found as plunder rather than take it home.Deu 29:17Deu 7:26
Both reach past worship to the table. Forbidden food can be called by the one word and refused by the other, so disgust covers what a person eats as well as what a person worships.Zec 9:7Lev 11:11
It names the loathsome thing itself, and most often that thing is an idol. It can even stand in for a foreign god by name, so that a god is introduced as the loathsome thing belonging to Sidon, Moab or Ammon.1Ki 11:51Ki 11:72Ki 23:13
Because it names an object, it is something that can be set up, carried into a building, and later swept away. Kings and prophets speak of these things being planted in the temple or cleared out of the land.Jer 7:30Jer 32:34Ezk 11:182Ch 15:8
It supplies the fixed phrase for the ruin of the temple, the thing later Bibles render "the abomination that makes desolate", where one particular object left standing in the sanctuary is the sign of disaster.Dan 9:27Dan 11:31Dan 12:11
It can be flung at a person as public shame, filth thrown on a city to disgrace her in front of onlookers, which is a use no command about attitude could carry.Nam 3:6
תּוֹעֵבַהthe broad noun for whatever God finds abhorrent, covering conduct, worship, and trade alike; this verb names the act of pushing such a thing away, and the two meet in the command to detest an idol brought home (Deuteronomy 7:26)
This word is the reaction itself, the loathing a person is told to feel and act on. Israel is not merely informed that certain creatures are off limits; the people are ordered to treat them as disgusting and refuse them.Lev 11:11Lev 11:13
Its home is the food laws, where the creatures in view are unclean rather than wicked. A stork or a swarming thing has done nothing wrong; it simply may not be eaten, and the disgust attaches to contact with it.Lev 11:13Lev 11:43
The loathing can rebound onto the one who does it: eating what is forbidden makes a person's own life repulsive, so the damage lands on the eater and not only on the food.Lev 11:43Lev 20:25
Because it names a reaction, it can be denied. The psalm's comfort is that God did not recoil in disgust from a suffering man, which is a reassurance about how someone was received rather than a label put on anything.Psa 22:24
Both
The one verse that uses both shows how they fit together: the idol carried home is called the offensive thing, and the very next words command the household to loathe it utterly. One names the object, the other the response it must be given, and both insist the reaction be total rather than a matter of quiet avoidance.Deu 7:26
This word is the standing label for the thing itself, so it can head a list of offenses and be repeated over a whole catalog of practices Israel must not copy.Lev 18:22Deu 18:12
Its subject matter is worship and conduct rather than diet: idol worship and the rites of the surrounding nations, cheating with weights, and crooked dealing generally.Deu 12:31Deu 25:16Pro 11:1
It carries a set phrase, "an abomination to the LORD", which states God's verdict on something and is usually set against what pleases him, so the reader gets both halves of the judgment in one line.Pro 15:8Pro 12:22Deu 22:5
It is not reserved for God's judgment. It also reports what another people finds intolerable, as when Egyptians would not share a table with Hebrews and counted shepherds unacceptable.Gen 43:32Gen 46:34
shaqats in the other biblical languages
βδελύσσομαιGreek“to abhor”the Greek verb for detesting or turning away in disgust; the New Testament uses it of abhorring idols (Romans 2:22), which is close to the sharpest use of this Hebrew verb
Most of its uses sit inside Israel's food rules, where whole classes of creatures are to be treated as repulsive and refused at the table.Lev 11:11Lev 11:13
It can turn back on the person doing the loathing: by taking in what God has ruled off limits, a man makes his own self repulsive.Lev 11:43Lev 20:25
It is also used to say what God does not do, which gives the word a warmth its Greek counterpart never carries in the New Testament: he did not turn away in disgust from the cry of a suffering man.Psa 22:24
Both
Both name disgust that rejects rather than mere dislike. What is loathed is pushed away and refused, and in both Testaments an idol is the clearest thing to push away.Deu 7:26Rom 2:22
The Greek verb is the word the Greek Old Testament regularly reaches for when it translates this Hebrew verb, so when the New Testament brands something "detestable" it is carrying over the older idea of what God has ruled unfit to come near him.Lev 11:13Rev 21:8
In the New Testament the loathing is aimed at idols and at the worship of them, not at food, and it can expose the gap between what a person claims to loathe and how he actually lives.Rom 2:22
It can also label people rather than things. In the list of those shut out of the new city it names a class of persons who have made themselves repulsive by what they gave themselves to.Rev 21:8
What scholars say about shaqats
שִׁקֵּץ is attested only in the piel and is generally taken as denominative from שֶׁקֶץ (and the cognate שִׁקּוּץ), the noun for a detestable creature or object. BDB divides the uses into a declarative-estimative group, to detest or treat as detestable (Lev 11:11, 13; Deut 7:26;Ps 22:25 Heb), and a factitive group with a reflexive object נֶפֶשׁ, to make oneself detestable (Lev 11:43; 20:25); HALOT and DCH order the material similarly. Which of the two nuances a given occurrence carries follows the analysis of the piel set out by Jenni, and the boundary is not sharp: Lev 11:43 and 20:25 can be read as making the self loathsome or as rendering the appetite loathsome, since נֶפֶשׁ in these verses is often taken as throat or appetite rather than the person as a whole. Milgrom argues that in the Holiness and Priestly material the verb belongs to the vocabulary of separation rather than of moral condemnation: the animals are not culpable, and the language marks the boundary of the table and of contact. TDOT and NIDOTTE treat the שׁקץ word group alongside תעב, noting that שׁקץ concentrates in cultic and dietary contexts while תעב ranges more broadly over covenantal, moral, and social abhorrence. The single non-cultic occurrence, Ps 22:25 (Eng. 22:24), applies the verb to God's non-rejection of the sufferer and is regularly cited as showing the verb's basic sense of contemptuous turning away.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. שׁקץlexicon
BDB, s.v. שׁקץlexicon
DCH, s.v. שׁקץlexicon
E. Jenni, Das hebräische Pi'el (Zurich: EVZ, 1968)monograph
J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991), on Leviticus 11commentary