שְׁאֵלָה
petition
‘petition’ is one of 3 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7596 appears in the Book of Judges — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Judges
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, שאלה (shᵉʼêlâh) means “petition.” First canonically at Judges 8:24, it enters the text early. It appears 14 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Esther (43%), then 1 Samuel and 1 Kings. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Dig into 14-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7596 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 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 14 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 57%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 43%
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: Petition 6×, Request 3×, Is thy petition 2×
- American Standard Version: Petition 8×, Is thy petition 2×, Request 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Petition 5×, Request 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Request 8×, Petition 4×, Is your petition 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7596 across 14 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7596 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H7596 across 12 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7596 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
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 2 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.
- 1. request, petition, Ju 8:24; 1 K 2:16, 20 (both acc. cogn. c. שָׁאַל), Est 5:6, 7 (c. נָתַן = grant), 7:2, 3; 9:12. This passes easily into e.g. Judges 8:24
- 2. thing asked for, 1 S 2:20, c. נָתַן 1:17, 27; Est 5:8 ψ 106:15; תָּבוֹא שׁ׳ Jb 6:8.—ii. שֵׁלָה v. infr. אֶשְׁתָּאֹל n.pr.m., v. p. 84a. e.g. 1 Samuel 2:20
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
[i. שֵׁלָה] n.f. request, thing asked for;—שְׁא׳ Ju 8:24 +; sf. שְׁאֵלָתִי 1 S 1:27 +, שֶׁאֱלָתִי Jb 6:8, שְׁאֵלָתֵךְ Est 5:6 +, שֵׁלָתֵךְ 1 S 1:17, שֶׁאֱלָתָם ψ 106:15;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שאל (shâʼal) (H7592) — to ask.
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.
שְׁאֵלָה
- 1. request, esp. sh’elah, prayer for rain, inserted in the ninth section of the Prayer of Benedictions. Ber. V, 2 (33ᵃ), v. שָׁאַל. Ber. 26ᵇ; 29ᵃ טעה … ש׳ בברכת השנים (v. Ms. M. in Rabb. D. S. a. l.) if by mistake … he omitted the prayer for rain in the ninth section; (Tosef. ib. III, 9 ולא שאל את הגשמים). Taan. 4ᵇ ש׳ לחוד והזכרה לחוד prayer for rain is one thing, and reference to rain (in the second section) is another thing, v. הַזְכָּרָה. Ib. 2ᵇ משעה שמפסיק לש׳ וכ׳ when you cease to insert the prayer for rain, you must also cease to insert the reference to rain; a. fr.
- 2. question, problem. B. Kam. 116ᵃ זו ש׳ היא Ms. H. (ed. וזו שאילה) this is indeed a question (worth asking); Zeb. 30ᵇ; 92ᵇ. Sabb. 31ᵃ ש׳ גדולה שאלת thou hast asked a great question; a. fr.
- 3. (v. שָׁאַל, Nif.) ritual question, esp. case of absolution from a vow brought before a scholar. Num. R. s. 113 אם באת … על הדין ועל הש׳ וכ׳ when a woman comes to thee at college to ask concerning a law or a vow, consider her as if she were thy own daughter. Ned. 60ᵃ צריך ש׳ לחכם this requires absolution by a scholar. Ib. 69ᵃ יש ש׳ בהקם can absolution from confirmation be applied for? Ib. 78ᵃ; B. Bath. 120ᵇ יש ש׳ בהקדש absolution from consecration of an object may eventually be had; אין ש׳ וכ׳ is not admissible; a. fr.—Pl. שְׁאֵלוֹת, שְׁאֵי׳. Gen. R. s. 82; Yalk. ib. 136 שלש ש׳ אני וכ׳ I shall ask you three questions; if you answer them, it is right &c. Gen. R. s. 49, v. עִרְבּוּב; a. e.
- 4. שְׁאֵלָה or שַׁאֲלָה, loan, v. שְׁאֵילָה.
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 13 distinct written forms H7596 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| שְׁאֵ֣לָתִ֔/י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 5:8 | 2 |
| בִּ/שְׁאֵ֣לָתִ֔/י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 7:3 | 1 |
| הַ/שְּׁאֵלָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 2:20 | 1 |
| שְׁאֵלָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 8:24 | 1 |
| שְׁאֵלָ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 2:16 | 1 |
| שְׁאֵלָ֨ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 2:20 | 1 |
| שְׁאֵלָתִ֖/י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 5:7 | 1 |
| שֵׁ֣לָתֵ֔/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 1 Samuel 1:17 | 1 |
| שֶֽׁאֱלָתִ֑/י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Job 6:8 | 1 |
| שֶׁאֱלָתָ֑/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 106:15 | 1 |
| שְּׁאֵֽלָתֵ/ךְ֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 9:12 | 1 |
| שְּׁאֵלָתֵ֖/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 5:6 | 1 |
| שְּׁאֵלָתֵ֛/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Esther 7:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7596, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- אשתאל ʼEshtâʼôl H847 Eshtaol
- משאל Mishʼâl H4861 Misheal
- שאול shᵉʼôwl H7585 Sheol
- שאול Shâʼûwl H7586 Saul
- שאל Shᵉʼâl H7594 Sheal
- שאלתיאל Shᵉʼaltîyʼêl H7597 Shealtiel
- שלה Shêlâh H7956 Shelah
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. 7 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 14 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
