וַיָּ֥שֶׁת חֹ֛שֶׁךְ סְבִיבֹתָ֖יו סֻכּ֑וֹת חַֽשְׁרַת מַ֖יִם עָבֵ֥י שְׁחָקִֽים
He made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
World English Bible · Public Domain
2 Samuel 22:12
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) 2 Samuel 22:12 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
He made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Highlights
- 1 hapax legomenon — only here in the Hebrew Bible
- 1 first appearance in the Hebrew Bible
- Septuagint runs longer here — compare
Download a study sheet
One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he set darkness, the booths around him a gathering of waters, clouds of the skies.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
He made darkness a canopy around Him, a gathering of water and thick clouds.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
He made darkness a canopy around Him, a gathering of water and thick clouds.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And he made darkness pavilions round about him, Gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And he made darkness pavilions round about him, gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And hee made darkenesse a Tabernacle round about him, euen the gatherings of waters, and the cloudes of the ayre.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
He made darkness a covering round about him: dropping waters out of the clouds of the heavens.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
And He setteth darkness Round about Him -- tabernacles, Darkness of waters -- thick clouds of the skies.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
And He sets darkness around Him [for His] dwelling places, || Darkness of waters [and] thick clouds of the skies.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
He made darkness a tent around him, gathering heavy rain clouds in the skies.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he set darkness, the booths around him a gathering of waters, clouds of the skies.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And he made darkness round about him a tent, Gatherings of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
He made darkness a shelter around himself, gathering of waters, and thick clouds of the skies.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And he made darkness pavilions around him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
He hid himself in darkness, covering himself with black rainclouds.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
And he made the dark his tent round him, a mass of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And He made darkness pavilions round about Him, gathering of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
חַֽשְׁרַת
chashrâh
H2841
“pool of”
Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct
- Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears here
- Part of Speech
- Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Feminine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Construct
Full BDB Definition
collection, mass, an accumulation of water
- וַיָּ֥שֶׁת shîyth H7896 “and · to set” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- חֹ֛שֶׁךְ chôshek H2822 “darkness” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- סְבִיבֹתָ֖יו çâbîyb H5439 “surroundings · his” Noun, Common, Both, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- סֻכּ֑וֹת çukkâh H5521 “booths” Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- חַֽשְׁרַת chashrâh H2841 “pool of” Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct
- מַ֖יִם mayim H4325 “water(s)” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute
- עָבֵ֥י ʻâb H5645 “clouds of” Noun, Common, Both, Plural, Construct
- שְׁחָקִֽים shachaq H7834 “clouds” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 8
- words
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Notable vocabulary
1 hapax legomenon — a word that appears only here in the entire Hebrew Bible:
- חַֽשְׁרַת pool H2841
First appearance in Scripture
This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:
- חַֽשְׁרַת pool H2841
Shared distinctive vocabulary
שְׁחָקִֽים dust H7834 occurs in 21 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 1 verb
- 7 nouns
Verb forms
- וַיָּ֥שֶׁת Qal · Sequential Imperfect
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 25 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
Cross-references
5Topical passages linked to 2 Samuel 22:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- 2 Samuel 22:10 He bowed the heavens also, and came down; Thick darkness was under his feet.
- Job 36:29 Yes, can any understand the spreading of the clouds, And the thunderings of his pavilion?
- Psalms 18:11–12 He made darkness his hiding-place, his pavilion around him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.
- Psalms 97:2 Clouds and darkness are around him. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
- Psalms 27:5 For in the day of trouble he will keep me secretly in his pavilion. In the covert of his tent he will hide me. He will lift me up on a rock.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 25 words vs World English Bible 15. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
καί τίθημι σκότος ἀποκρυφή αὐτός κύκλος αὐτός ὁ σκηνή αὐτός σκότος ὕδωρ παχύνω ἐν νεφέλη ἀήρ
And he made darkness his hiding-place; his tabernacle round about him was the darkness of waters, he condensed it with the clouds of the air.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
וְאַשְׁרֵי שְׁכִינְתֵּיהּ בַּעֲרָפֵילָא וַעֲנַן יְקַר סְחוֹר סְחוֹר לֵיהּ מָחִית מִיִן תַּקִיפִין מֵרִכְפַּת עֲנָנִין קַלִילִין בְּרוּם עַלְמָא:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
2 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 8 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is chashrâh (“pool”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “pool” (chashrâh) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- This verse holds 1 word here found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. What might the rare word draw attention to?
- The word “pool” first appears here in Scripture. What is being introduced at this debut?
- Deuteronomy 33:26 shares the word «dust» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- Compared with the Hebrew, the Septuagint runs longer here. What questions does that raise?
- The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
- The verb «וַיָּ֥שֶׁת» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
- Reading how Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?
Things to notice
- 1 word in this verse appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
- 1 word makes its first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
- These translations choose different wording for 10 words in this verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on 2 Samuel 22:12 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Whedon's Commentary on the Bible
Daniel D. Whedon
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Rashi
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)
Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.