שָׁאָה
to gaze
‘to gaze’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
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: ‘gaze’
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7583 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
Genesis 1 verse
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.
At its core, שאה (shâʼâh) means “to gaze.” It occurs a mere 1 verse across Scripture. Its uses cluster heavily in Genesis (100% of all occurrences). A true hapax — its single appearance is Genesis 24:21. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 4 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7583 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 100%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Wondering 1×
- American Standard Version†: Looked stedfastly 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Watched 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Watched 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7583 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7583 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7583 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7583 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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 Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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.
שאה I make a din or crash, crash into ruins (perhaps akin to שׁוֹאָה (√ שׁוא) storm, devastation
Qal
- Pf. 3 pl. שָׁאוּ Is 6:11 until cities have crashed into ruins; + perhaps Na 1:5 (p. 671a). e.g. Isaiah 6:11
Niphal
- Impf. 3 fs. תִּשָּׁאֶה שְׁמָמָה Is 6:11, usually, and the ground be ruined into a desolation, but 𝔊 Lo Du Marti תִּשָּׁאֵר be left a desol.; 3 mpl. יִשָּׁא֑וּן Is 17:12 they are in uproar (of nations, ‖ יֶהֱמָיוּן), v 13 (but del. as doublet Du CheHpt. Marti). e.g. Isaiah 6:11
Hiphil
- Inf. cstr. לְהַשְׁאוֹת Is 37:26, = לַהְשׁוֹת 2 K 19:25 (Ges§ 23 f Köi. 570, who follow van d. H. in giving לְהַשְׁאוֹת as Qr, but v. Baer Gi), to cause … cities to crash into ruined heaps. e.g. Isaiah 37:26
שאה II
Hithpael
- gaze (appar. ‖ form of שָׁעָה, q.v.);—Pt. ms. הָאִישׁ מִשְׁתָּאֵה לָהּ Gn 24:21 (J) the man was gazing at her (Ges§ 130 a). e.g. Genesis 24:21
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. make a din or crash, crash into ruins (perhaps akin to שׁוֹאָה (√ שׁוא) storm, devastation; > Aramaic ܫܗܳܐ be deserted, שַׁהֲוָוא, שַׁהֲוָתָא desert);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שאה (shâʼâh) (H7582) — to crash.
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.
חֲמִישַׁי
- Targ. Gen. I, 23 (ed. Amst. שָׁאִי …); a. fr.—Fem. חֲמִישֵׁיתָא, שִׁיתָא … Targ. Lev. XIX, 25.—Pesik. R. s. 23 (ed. Fr. p. 115ᵇ) חֲמִישְׁתָּא; ib. (p. 120ᵃ) חמשיתא (corr. acc.) the fifth day of the week.—V. חֲמְשִׁיתָא.
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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7583, 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.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- שאוה shaʼăvâh H7584 devastating storm
- שאון shâʼôwn H7588 roar
- שאיה shᵉʼîyâh H7591 ruin
- שאת shêʼth H7612 devastation
- שה seh H7716 sheep
- שת shêth H8351 buttocks
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 → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. 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 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.
