שָׁלָה
to be at rest
also: prosper, be quiet, be at ease 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
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7951 appears in the Book of Lamentations — 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.
Lamentations
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.
שלה — transliterated shâlâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to be at rest.” It occurs a mere 5 verses across Scripture. More than a third of its appearances fall in Job. Debuting at Job 3:26, it then recurs through the corpus. It also covers “prosper”, “be quiet”, and “be at ease”, alongside “to be at rest” — see its full sense range. 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 H7951 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 80%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 20%
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†: Prosper 2×
- American Standard Version†: Prosper 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Are at ease 1×, Are safe 1×, Ease 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Prosper 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7951 across 5† 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 H7951 across 4† 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 H7951 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7951 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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 1 sense 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.
שלה I be quiet, at ease (Ecclus 47
שלה II draw out, extract (si vera l.
Qal
- Impf. 3 ms. apoc. (Ges§ 109 k) כִּי יֵ֫שֶׁל אֱלוֹהַּ נַפְשׁוֹ Jb 27:8 (De); יָשֹׁל, or יִשַּׁל (√ שׁלל) Di; Schnurrer We Siegf Bu Du יִשְׁאַל demandeth; PerlesAnal. 48 יִשָּׂא אֶל־אֱלוֹהַּ. e.g. Job 27:8
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. vb. be quiet, at ease (Ecclus 47:13 שלוה prosperity, 41:lc שליו prosperous, at ease; ܫܠܴܐ be tranquil, quiet, cease; 𝔗 שְׁלָא, שְׁלִי be at ease, then be careless, thoughtless, go astray [for Heb. שָׁגָה, שָׁגַג
II. vb. draw out, extract (si vera l.; = שָׁלַל; Syriac ܫܠܴܐ (e.g. Ex 2:10), 𝔗Jer שְׁלִי (e.g. Lv 11:17));—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
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.
שָׁלָה
- , v. שלי
שְׁלָה
- (v. שָׁלֵו)
- 1. to hang down; denom. שִׁלְהֵי.
- 2. (denom. of שִׁלְהֵי) to end, complete. Targ. Is. X, 32 כד יִשְׁלֶה עלמא וכ׳ (prob. to be read: יַשְׁלֶה) when the world shall have completed its (Messianic) period; (Targ. Y. II, Ex. XII, 42 יַשְׁלִים).
- 3. to be at ease; v. שַׁלְהַיָּא.
שלי
- Job XXVII, 8) to draw out, pull. Taan. 24ᵃ; Sabb. 107ᵇ השׁוֹלֶה דג וכ׳ he that takes a fish out of the water (on the Sabbath). Ḥull. 63ᵃ (expl. שָׁלָךְ, Lev. XI, 17) זה השולה דגים וכ׳ that is the bird that catches fish out of the sea. M. Kat. II, 3 ושולה פשתנו וכ׳ and may take his flax out of the pond. Yalk. Koh. 966 אדם שוקע … שולה ראשון if one sinks pots into his furnace, he takes out first what he has last put in; a. fr.—[Y. Maas. Sh. III, 53ᶜ top שולה, read: שורה, v. שָׁרָה.] e.g. Job 27:8
- same, esp. to draw wine (out of the pit). Ab. Zar. 56ᵃ; B. Mets. 92ᵇ היין … משׁיְשַׁלֶּה בחביות wine is subject to tithes …, when he fills it into kegs; Y. Ter. II, 41ᵇ bot. משישלה ומשיקפה (not משיקיפה) when he has filled and skimmed it; עד שלא שי׳ וכ׳ before he filled or skimmed it. Tosef. Maasr. I, 7 המקדיש … עד שלא שילה וקיפה מששילה וקיפה וכ׳ (ed. Zuck. שולה וקופה וכ׳, corr. acc.) if one dedicates the contents of a pit before he has drawn and skimmed the wine, and the Temple collector comes after he has done so &c.; a. e.
- to be pulled, drawn away. Gen. R. s. 22, beg. (ref. to Gen. IV, 1) ידע מאיזו שלוה נ׳ he knew from what happiness he was drawn away (through his wife). e.g. Genesis 4:1
שלי ²
- II, v. שָׁלֵו
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 H7951 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִ֝שְׁלָ֗יוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 122:6 | 1 |
| יִשְׁלָ֤יוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 12:6 | 1 |
| שָׁל֔וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Lamentations 1:5 | 1 |
| שָׁל֖וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Jeremiah 12:1 | 1 |
| שָׁלַ֨וְתִּי | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Job 3:26 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7951, 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.
Derived from this word
- שילה Shîylôh H7886 tranquillity
- שלה shᵉlâh H7954 at ease
- שלו sᵉlâv H7958 quail
- שלו shelev H7959 ease
- שלו shâlêv H7961 quiet
- שלוה shalvâh H7962 quietness
- שלי shᵉlîy H7987 quietness
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
