שְׁוָא
Sheva
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Sheva’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H7724 appears — 2 distinct verses across 2 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
1 Chronicles 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, שוא (Shᵉvâʼ) means “Sheva.” It occurs a mere 2 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to 2 Samuel (50%), then 1 Chronicles. Scripture first uses it in 2 Samuel 20:25. 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 H7724 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Samuel 1 verse 50%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 50%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 50%
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: Sheva 1×
- American Standard Version: Sheva 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sheva 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sheva 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7724 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7724 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7724 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7724 across 1 tagged occurrence — 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. Calebite 1 Ch 2:49, Σαου, Σουε. e.g. 1 Chronicles 2:49
- 2. secretary, David’s time 2 S 20:25 Qr (Kt שׁיא), Ιησους, A Ισους, 𝔊L Σουσα (v. שְׂרָיָה(וּ) 1). e.g. 2 Samuel 20:25
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
Derived from שוא (shâvᵉʼ) (H7723) — vanity.
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.
שָׁוְא
- v. שָׁהָה) [vacancy,] vanity, inanity, falsehood. שבועת ש׳ a false oath, vowing to do something impossible, opp. בִּיטּוּי. Shebu. III, 9 שבועה שאוכל … והשנייה שבועת ש׳ (if one says) ‘I swear that I will eat this loaf, (and) I swear that I will not eat it’, the former is a useless oath (or vow), the second a false oath; אכלה עבר על שבועת ש׳ וכ׳ if he eats it, he is guilty of a false oath (having sworn that he would not eat it); if he does not eat it, he is (also) guilty of a useless oath. Ib. 8 איזוהי שבועת ש׳ נשבע וכ׳ what is a vain oath of affirmation? If one swears to that which is known to be otherwise, saying of a stone column that it is gold &c.; נשבע … שאי אפשר וכ׳ if one affirms an impossibility, saying I swear that I have seen a camel fly in the air. Ib. נשבע לבטל … זו היא שבועת ש׳ וכ׳ if he swears that he will neglect a command, that he will not erect a Succah, …: that is a vain oath, on the wilful pronouncing of which he is punished with stripes &c. Ib. 21ᵃ איזוהי שבועת ש׳ … שקר נשבע וכ׳ what is a vain oath? If one swears to what is known to be otherwise; a false oath, if one swears to the opposite of the truth (e.g. ‘I have eaten’, when he has not, ‘I have not eaten’, when he has), v. שֶׁקֶר. Ib. 20ᵇ ש׳ ושקר אחד הן a vain oath (shav) and a false oath (sheḳer) are the same; a. fr.—תפלת ש׳ a vain prayer, a prayer concerning a thing which cannot be changed. Ber. IX, 3; a. fr.—Ex. R. s. 3 (ref. to מתי שוא, Job XI, 11) God knows העם המתים על הש׳ לעשותו the people that risk their lives for falsehood (idolatry) to commit it; העתידים לעשות ש׳ וכ׳ those that will commit falsehood and be put to death.—לַשָּׁ׳ in vain, to no purpose. Keth. 62ᵇ, v. שָׁמַר. Y. Meg. III, 74ᵃ bot., v. תַּמְרוּרִים. e.g. Job 11:11
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 2 distinct written forms H7724 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/שְׁוָ֖א | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 20:25 | 1 |
| שְׁוָ֛א | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:49 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7724, 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
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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Sheva). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Heb. Shebher. (1.) The son of Caleb (1 Chr. 2:49).
(2.) Heb. Sheva', one of David's scribes (2 Sam. 20:25).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(Jehovah contends).
+ The scribe or royal secretary of David. (2 Samuel 20:26) He is called elsewhere Meraiah, (2 Samuel 8:17) Shisha, (1 Kings 4:3) And SHANSHA. (1 Chronicles 18:16) (B.C. 1015.) + Son of Caleb ben-Hezron by his concubine Maachah. (1 Chronicles 2:49) (B.C. about 1445.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
vanity; elevation; fame; tumult
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
