גָּעַשׁ
to shake
‘to shake’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hithpael verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself). Here: ‘shake back and forth’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Hithpolel
- The reflexive counterpart of the Polel.
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 3 times (30%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Hithpolel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Pual, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hithpolel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 10 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1607 appears — 7 distinct verses across 4 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
2 Samuel 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Jeremiah 4 verses
- Jeremiah 5:22 וַ/יִּֽתְגָּעֲשׁוּ֙ conj + Hithpael wimpf 3mp Don't you fear me? says Yahweh: won't you tremble at my presence, who have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it can't pass it? and though the waves of it toss themselves, yet they can't prevail; though they roar, yet they can't pass over it.
- Jeremiah 25:16 וְ/הִֽתְגֹּֽעֲשׁ֖וּ conj + Hithpolel wpf 3cp They shall drink, and reel back and forth, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.
- Jeremiah 46:7 יִֽתְגָּעֲשׁ֖וּ Hithpael impf 3mp Who is this who rises up like the Nile, whose waters toss themselves like the rivers?
- Jeremiah 46:8 יִתְגֹּ֣עֲשׁוּ Hithpolel impf 3mp Egypt rises up like the Nile, and his waters toss themselves like the rivers: and he says, I will rise up, I will cover the earth; I will destroy cities and the inhabitants of it.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“to shake” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb געש (gâʻash). It clusters heavily in Jeremiah, which alone accounts for 57% of its uses. With 7 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. First canonically at 2 Samuel 22:8, it enters the text early. Read the stem: it spans 4 stems, including Qal and Pual. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1607 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 7 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 71%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 29%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Shook 3×, Are moved 2×
- American Standard Version: Shook 2×, Toss 2×, Were shaken 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Churn 2×, Shook 2×, They were shaken 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Shook 2×, Shook themselves 2×, Then 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1607 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1607 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1607 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1607 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel), Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal), and one or more reduplicated stems (the Pōlēl/Pilpēl type), which for hollow or geminate roots behave much like Piel — often intensive or iterative.
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 4 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
Qal
- Impf. וַתִּגְעַשׁ ψ 18:8a = 2 S 22:8a Kt (Qr Hithp.);—quake of earth at theoph, ψ 18:8 = 2 S 22:8 (read Kt; ‖ רעשׁ). e.g. Psalms 18:8
Pual
- Impf. be shaken up, convulsed יְגֹעֲשׁוּ־עָם Jb 34:20 a people are convulsed. e.g. Job 34:20
Hithpael
- shake back and forth, toss or reel to and fro וַיִּתְגָּעַשׁ Qr 2 S 22:8a (Qal); יִתְגָּֽעֲשׁוּ Je 46:7, וַיִּתְגָּֽעֲשׁוּ ψ 18:8b + 2 times;—of mountains ψ 18:8b = 2 S 22:8b; of waves of sea, Je 5:22; of waters of Nile Je 46:7 (cf. v 8). e.g. 2 Samuel 22:8
Hithpo
- Pf. וְהִתְגֹּעֲשׁוּ consec. Je 25:16; Impf. יִתְגֹּעֲשׁוּ Je 46:8; id. of waters of Nile Je 46:8; of drunken men, reel to and fro, Je 25:16 (fig. of nations confounded by י׳). e.g. Jeremiah 25:16
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
vb. shake, quake (NH id.)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
גָּעַשׁ
- (b. h.)
- 1. to rush forth, to quake, be agitated. Yalk. Josh. 35 (cit. fr. Sabb. 105ᵇ, ref. to הר געש Josh. XXIV, 30) מלמד שג׳ עליהם ההר להרגם it intimates that the mountain over them quaked (threatening) to slay them; Sabb. l. c. שרגש. Cant. R. to III, 10 ג׳ הים וכ׳ the sea rushed forth and flooded the cave. e.g. Joshua 24:30
- 2. to cough or sneeze. Lev. R. s. 3 ג׳ השור וכ׳.
- to shake, cause to reel. Koh. R. to VII, 1 להרעיש וגם להַגְעִישׁ וכ׳ to shake and even make reel the mountain &c., v. supra.
- , Nithpa. נִתְגָּעַשׁ to be agitated, very busy, anxious. Ruth R., introd. 2 נִתְגָּעֲשׁוּ … מעשות ג"ח וכ׳ the Israelites were too much engrossed (in settling) to attend the funeral of Joshua; Koh. R. l. c.—Pesik. R. addit. s. 2 (ref. to יגעשו, Job XXXIV, 20) מִתְגָּעֲשִׁים וכ׳ marched hurriedly to get out &c. e.g. Job 34:20
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms H1607 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ו/תגעש | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | 2 Samuel 22:8 | 1 |
| וְ/הִֽתְגֹּֽעֲשׁ֖וּ | Verb, Hithpolel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Jeremiah 25:16 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּֽתְגָּעֲשׁ֖וּ | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 2 Samuel 22:8 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּֽתְגָּעֲשׁוּ֙ | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 5:22 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּתְגָּעַ֤שׁ | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 2 Samuel 22:8 | 1 |
| וַ/תִּגְעַ֬שׁ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Psalms 18:7 | 1 |
| וַ֝/יִּתְגָּֽעֲשׁ֗וּ | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 18:7 | 1 |
| יְגֹעֲשׁ֣וּ | Verb, Pual, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 34:20 | 1 |
| יִֽתְגָּעֲשׁ֖וּ | Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 46:7 | 1 |
| יִתְגֹּ֣עֲשׁוּ | Verb, Hithpolel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 46:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1607, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
