שׂוּחַ
to meditate
also: muse, commune, speak, complain fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
Every verse where H7742 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.
שוח (sûwach) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to meditate.” It is rare — just 1 verse in the entire Hebrew Bible. It clusters heavily in Genesis, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. A true hapax — its single appearance is Genesis 24:63. Ranging over 2 senses, its meaning includes “muse”, “commune”, and “speak”. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7742 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).
- King James Version: Meditate 1×
- American Standard Version: Meditate 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Meditate 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Meditate 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7742 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7742 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7742 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7742 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- (Qal) to meditate, muse, commune, speak, complain
- meaning uncertain
Word origin
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.
סוּחַ
- [to think,] to talk; to tell. Shebu. VII, 3; 6 איני יודע מה אתה סָח (Y. ed. שָׂח) I do not know what you are talking about. Ber. 51ᵃ סח לי told me. Sot. 44ᵇ שח בין תפילה וכ׳ if one talks between putting on the T’fillin of the arm and of the head; Men. 36ᵃ סח; a. fr.—Ḥull. 27ᵃ, v. חָטָא I.—[Yalk. Ps. 755, read: שָׁח, v. שׁוּחַ.]
- same. Ber. 51ᵇ אין מְסִיחִין על כוס וכ׳ you must not converse while holding up the cup of benediction. Sabb. 13ᵇ והיתה מְסִיחָה וכ׳ and she told (me) all that happened to her. Y. Gitt. IX, end, 50ᵈ מסיחין, מש׳, v. סִיחָה. Pesik. R. s. 31 עומד ומֵסִיחַ וכ׳ (the text, Is. XLIX, 8 sq.) stands and speaks (is a standing prophecy) of the king Messiah. Deut. R. s. 1 מי אתה מסיח עמי וכ׳ who art thou that art talking to me &c.?—Gen. R. s. 13, beg. (ref. to שיח, Gen. II, 5) כל … כאילו מְשִׂיחִין אלו וכ׳ all trees speak to one another as it were; מש׳ עם הבריות speak to men; Yalk. ib. 20. Ex. R. s. 1 להָשִׂיחַ עלינו to talk against us. Tanḥ. T’rum. 9; Yalk. Mal. 587, v. קָבַע I; a. fr.—מסיח לפי תומו, v. תּוֹם.—Yoma 75ᵃ (ref. to ישחנה, Prov. XII, 25) חד אמר יִשְּׂחֶנָּה מדעתו וחד אמר יְשִׂיחֶנָה לאחרים one says, let him dismiss it (fr. נָשַׂח = נָסַח; Ms. M. 2 יַסִּיחֶנָּה) from his mind; the other says, let him speak it out to others; Sot. 42ᵇ; Snh. 100ᵇ; Yalk. Prov. 950; v. נָסַח. e.g. Isaiah 49:8
שְׁוַוח
- = h. שׁוּחַ,
- 1. to bend, be lowered, sink. Targ. Ps. X, 10 יִשְׁוַוח Ms. (ed. יְשׁוּחַ). Targ. Job XXII, 29 Ms. (ed. שַׁוַּוח, q. v.).—V. שׁוּחַ ch.
- 2. to lower, level, destroy. Targ. Ps. LXXIV, 3 למִשְׁוַוח ed. Lag. (ed. למשווק, למשוק, corr. acc.; Levita למִשְׁוָה, h. text למשאות).
שְׁוַוח ²
- (preced.) pit. Targ. Ps. VII, 16 Ms. (ed. שׁוּחַ).
שַׁוַּוח
- (preced.) low-spirited, worrying. Targ. Job XXII, 29 ש׳ בסורחנא troubled on account of sin (Ms. שְׁוַוח בעיני בירייתא low in the sight of men; h. text שח עינים).
שׂוּחַ
- , v. סוּחַ
שׁוּחַ I
- (b. h.) to bend, sink. Ḥull. 27ᵃ ממקום ששָׁח וכ׳, v. חָטָא I. Ib. שח … והוא שח ועומד הוא ‘where it bends’ implies (that the limb which is to be cut) must be erect (when in its natural condition), but this (the tail) is always hanging down. Y. Taan. II, 65ᶜ top צריך לָשׁוּחַ בכולן (or לָשׁוֹחַ fr. שחח) he must bend down with all of them (the eighteen vertebræ). Ber. 34ᵃ, v. שָׁחָה. Ab. V, 21 בן תשעים לָשׁוּחַ at ninety years (is the time) for being bent (perh. meant as noun לַשּׁוּחַ). Midr. Till. to Ps. XLVIII לבו שח עליו his heart within him is bent (in grief over his sin); Yalk. ib. 755 סח (corr. acc.); a. fr.
- to be bent down, depressed. Midr. Till. to Ps. XLII אני מתקנאה ומִשְׁתּוֹחַחַת וכ׳ I am jealous and desperate, when I see the happiness of the nations &c.
שׁוּחַ
- , v. שְׁוַוח II.—Part. שָׁיֵחַ; f. שָׁיְחָא, שָׁיְי׳ (שִׁיחָא); pl. שָׁיְחָן, שָׁיְי׳; Targ. Ps. XLIV, 26 (ed. Wil. שִׁי׳). Targ. Job IX, 13; a. e.—Sabb. 67ᵃ (in an incantation for a swallowed fish-bone) שִׁיחַ שִׁיחַ (or שְׁיַח) Ar. (ed. שְׁיֵיא) sink down, sink down!
שׁוּחַ II
- (preced.) bending. Ab. V, 21, v. שׁוּחַ I.—בנות ש׳ a species of white figs. Dem. I, 1; a. e., v. בַּת I.
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.
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.
