שַׁ֫יִת
thorn bushes
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 6 times (86%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H7898 appears — 7 distinct verses 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.
Isaiah 7 verses
- Isaiah 5:6 וָ/שָׁ֑יִת conj + n c ms I will lay it a wasteland. It won't be pruned nor hoed, But it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it."
- Isaiah 7:23 וְ/לַ/שַּׁ֖יִת conj + prep det + n c ms It will happen in that day that every place where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silver shekels, shall be for briers and thorns.
- Isaiah 7:24 וָ/שַׁ֖יִת conj + n c ms People will go there with arrows and with bow, because all the land will be briers and thorns.
- Isaiah 7:25 וָ/שָׁ֑יִת conj + n c ms All the hills that were cultivated with the hoe, you shall not come there for fear of briers and thorns; but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of sheep."
- Isaiah 9:18 וָ/שַׁ֖יִת conj + n c ms For wickedness burns as the fire; it devours the briers and thorns; yes, it kindles in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke.
- Isaiah 10:17 שִׁית֥/וֹ n c ms cs + sfx pers 3ms The light of Israel will be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day.
- Isaiah 27:4 שַׁ֨יִת֙ n c ms Wrath is not in me: would that the briers and thorns were against me in battle! I would march on them, I would burn them together.
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.
שית (shayith) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “thorn bushes.” Isaiah dominates its distribution — 7 of 7 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 7 verses — uncommon. It first appears in Isaiah 5:6. Its English rendering has broadened — “thorns” classically, “thorn” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7898 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.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Isaiah 7 verses 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 7 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 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: Thorns 7×
- American Standard Version: Thorns 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Thorns 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Thorn 7×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7898 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7898 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7898 across 7 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7898 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- thorn bushes
Word origin
n.[m.] coll. thorn-bushes (connex. with above √ dub.; DietrAbh. 73 cp. (improb.) שׁאה devastate, שְׁאִיָּה ruin, whence שׁ׳ wild, rough growth);—always c. שָׁמִיר: abs. שׁ׳ Is 7:23, 24; 9:17; 27:4 (cf. Du); שָׁ֑יִת 5:6; 7:25; sf. שִׁיתוֹ 10:17 (fig. Assyrian).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שית (shîyth) (H7896) — to set.
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.
מַשְׁתִּית
- (denom. of שָׁת, pl. שָׁתוֹת; שִׁית) foundation. Gen. R. s. 71 (play on ב̇ג̇ד̇, Gen. XXX, 11) ב̇א מי שעתיד לג̇ד̇ד מַשְׁתִּיתָן וכ׳ he is coming who is destined to cut down the foundation (idolatry) of the gentiles (Ellijah the Gadite). v. מִשְׁתּוּיִין; Midr. Till. to Ps. XC, 1 מַשְׁתִּיתוֹ של עכ"ום the foundation of idolatry. Gen. R. s. 75 (ref. to השתות, Ps. XI, 3) Jacob שהוא מַשְׁתִּיתוֹ ויסודו וכ׳ who is the foundation and basis of the world; (Yalk. Ps. 653 שְׁתִיַּית עולם, v. שְׁתִיָּה). Koh. R. to II, 5 מַשְׁתִּיתָהּ של ארץ the foundation (centre) of the earth. Ib. to II, 12. Midr. Sam. ch. XXVI. e.g. Genesis 30:11
שִׁית I
- to place, set, make.
- same. Snh. 27ᵃ (ref. to Ex. XXIII, 1) אל תָּשֶׁת רשע עד make not a wicked man a witness (disqualify him); אל תשת חמס עד allow not violence (robbers) to testify; Mekh. Mishp., s. 20; Yalk. Ex. 352.—[Yalk. Ps. 620 השיתיו, v. שָׁתָה II.] e.g. Exodus 23:1
שִׁית II
- (שָׁתַת II) foundation; (cmp. יְסוֹד) bottom, esp. Shith, a pit by the side of the altar into which the remainder of libations was poured. Midd. III, 3 שבו יורדין לש׳ וכ׳ by which men went down the Sh. to cleanse it. Tosef. Succ. III, 15 יורדין לש׳ וכ׳ the wine goes down into the pit and is swallowed up there. Ib. (ref. to וגם יקב, Is. V, 2) זה הש׳ this refers to the Sh.; Y. ib. IV, 54ᵈ top; Bab. ib. 49ᵃ השִׁיתִּין (pl.).—Pl. שִׁיתִּין. Ib. ש׳ מששת ימי וכ׳ the Shittin have existed from the six days of creation (are a natural cavity). Ib. 53ᵃ בשעה שכרה דוד ש׳ when David began to dig the pits (for the Temple); Macc. 11ᵃ; Yalk. Ps. 878 שִׁתִּין. Meïl. III, 3 (11ᵃ) (ירדו) יצאו לש׳ וכ׳ so soon as the wine is let down into the pits &c. Yalk. Ps. 653, v. פָּגַר. e.g. Isaiah 5:2
שִׁית III
- wild fig.—Pl. שִׁיתִין (or שִׁיתִּין). Dem. I, 1; Tosef. ib. I, 1; Erub. 18ᵃ; Ber. 40ᵇ (expl. מין תאנים).
שִׁית
- = h. שֵׁשׁ, six. Targ. Gen. VII, 6 (O. ed. Berl. שֵׁית; ed. Vien. שִׁתְּ). Ib. XXX, 20 (O. ed. Berl. שיתה); a. v. fr.—Pes. 94ᵃ ש׳ אלפי וכ׳ the world (distance from sunrise to sunset) is six thousand parasangs. Snh. 97ᵃ ש׳ אלפי שני הוי וכ׳ the world will exist six thousand years; a. fr.—Pl. שִׁיתִּין, שִׁתִּ׳ sixty. Targ. Gen. XXV, 26; a. fr.—B. Kam. 92ᵇ ש׳ תכלי, v. כַּכָּא. Ib. ש׳ רהוטי, v. צַפְרָא. Ab. Zar. 69ᵃ בש׳ requires sixty portions to be neutralized; a. e.—שִׁיתַּת עֲשַׂר, שֵׁיתֵיסַר, שֵׁיתְסַר, שֵׁיתְסְרֵי, שִׁיתְ׳ sixteen; sixteenth. Targ. Ex. XXVI, 25. Targ. Y. Deut. XXXIV, 8 (ed. Vien. שֵׁתֵיסַר); a. fr.—שֵׁיתְסְרָאָה m. the sixteenth. Targ. I Chr. XXIV, 14 (ed. Lag. שִׁיסְרָאָה).
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 5 distinct written forms H7898 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וָ/שַׁ֖יִת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 7:24 | 2 |
| וָ/שָׁ֑יִת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 5:6 | 2 |
| וְ/לַ/שַּׁ֖יִת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 7:23 | 1 |
| שִׁית֥/וֹ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 10:17 | 1 |
| שַׁ֨יִת֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 27:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7898, 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
- שית shîyth H7897 garment
- שתה shâthâh H8356 foundation
- שתה shêthâh H8357 buttocks
- שתי shᵉthîy H8359 woven material
Derived from this word
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 8 — 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 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.
