שָׁלַךְ
to throw
also: cast, hurl, fling 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
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Hophal
- The passive counterpart of the Hiphil (“he was caused to…”). Here: ‘be thrown’
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
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).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H7993 appears in the Book of 2 Kings — 15 distinct verses. 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 Kings
- 2 Kings 2:16 וַ/יַּשְׁלִכֵ֨/הוּ֙ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms + sfx pers 3ms They said to him, See now, there are with your servants fifty strong men; let them go, we pray you, and seek your master, lest the Spirit of Yahweh has taken him up, and cast him on some mountain, or into some valley. He said, You shall not send.
- 2 Kings 2:21 וַ/יַּשְׁלֶךְ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms He went forth to the spring of the waters, and cast salt therein, and said, Thus says Yahweh, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from there any more death or miscarrying.
- 2 Kings 3:25 יַשְׁלִ֨יכוּ Hiphil impf 3mp They beat down the cities; and on every good piece of land they cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the springs of water, and felled all the good trees, until in Kir Hareseth [only] they left the stones of it; however the men armed with slings went about it, and struck it.
- 2 Kings 4:41 וַ/יַּשְׁלֵ֖ךְ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms But he said, Then bring meal. He cast it into the pot; and he said, Pour out for the people, that they may eat. There was no harm in the pot.
- 2 Kings 6:6 וַ/יַּשְׁלֶךְ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms The man of God said, Where fell it? He shown him the place. He cut down a stick, and cast it in there, and made the iron to swim.
- 2 Kings 7:15 הִשְׁלִ֥יכוּ Hiphil pf 3cp They went after them to the Jordan: and, behold, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. The messengers returned, and told the king.
- 2 Kings 9:25 הַשְׁלִכֵ֔/הוּ Hiphil impv 2ms + sfx pers 3ms Then said [Jehu] to Bidkar his captain, Take up, and cast him in the portion of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember how that, when I and you rode together after Ahab his father, Yahweh laid this burden on him:
- 2 Kings 9:26 הַשְׁלִכֵ֛/הוּ Hiphil impv 2ms + sfx pers 3ms Surely I have seen yesterday the blood of Naboth, and the blood of his sons, says Yahweh; and I will requite you in this plat, says Yahweh. Now therefore take and cast him into the plat [of ground], according to the word of Yahweh.
- 2 Kings 10:25 וַ/יַּשְׁלִ֗כוּ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3mp It happened, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, and kill them; let none come forth. They struck them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal.
- 2 Kings 13:21 וַ/יַּשְׁלִ֥יכוּ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3mp It happened, as they were burying a man, that behold, they spied a band; and they cast the man into the tomb of Elisha: and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.
- 2 Kings 13:23 הִשְׁלִיכָ֥/ם Hiphil pf 3ms + sfx pers 3mp But Yahweh was gracious to them, and had compassion on them, and had respect to them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, neither cast he them from his presence as yet.
- 2 Kings 17:20 הִשְׁלִיכָ֖/ם Hiphil pf 3ms + sfx pers 3mp Yahweh rejected all the seed of Israel, and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.
- 2 Kings 23:6 וַ/יַּשְׁלֵךְ֙ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms He brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, outside of Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust of it on the graves of the common people.
- 2 Kings 23:12 וְ/הִשְׁלִ֥יךְ conj + Hiphil pf 3ms The altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, did the king break down, and beat [them] down from there, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
- 2 Kings 24:20 הִשְׁלִכ֥/וֹ Hiphil inf.cs + sfx pers 3ms For through the anger of Yahweh did it happen in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.
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.
שלך (shâlak) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to throw.” The King James Version usually renders it “cast,” while modern versions prefer “threw” (Berean Standard Bible) and “he threw” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. With 121 verses in 26 books, it is a common word in the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at Genesis 21:15, it then recurs through the corpus. It also covers “cast”, “hurl”, and “fling”, alongside “to throw” — see its full sense range. 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 H7993 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 →
- 121
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 121 distinct verses.
- 26 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 26 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #352
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 352 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 121 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 121 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 72 verses · 60%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 28 verses · 23%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 21 verses · 17%
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: Cast 39×, Cast away 5×, He cast 5×
- American Standard Version: Cast 30×, He cast 6×, Cast away 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Threw 14×, Cast 7×, Throw 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He threw 10×, Threw 9×, They threw 7×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7993 across 125 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 58 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 H7993 across 124 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 63 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 H7993 across 125 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 70 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 H7993 across 138 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 58 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 4 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.
Hophal
- 1. be thrown, cast
- 2. be cast forth, out
- 3. be cast down
- 4. metaph., be cast
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
[ שָׁלַךְ ] 125 vb. Hiph. 112 throw, fling, cast
— 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.
שָׁלַךְ
- , Hif. הִשְׁלִיךְ (b. h.) to cast off, throw down. Erub. 22ᵃ; Yalk. Deut. 846 להַשְׁלִיכוֹ, v. מַשּׂוֹא. Tanḥ. Sh’mini 11 הבחורים … ומַשְׁלִיכִין חומר וכ׳ young men and boys struck him (the drunken man) and cast mud in his face. Midr. Prov. ch. I נַשְׁלִיךְ אותו לבור let us cast him into a pit. Ib. נטל חכה והִשְׁלִיכָהּ לים he took a hook and threw it into the sea. Lam. R. to II, 1 הִשְׁלִיכוֹ לארץ he cast him off (his shoulder and) to the ground; a. fr.
- to be thrown. Tanḥ. Vayesh. 2 כיון שה׳ לבור וכ׳ when he was thrown into the pit, his face changed &c. Tanḥ. Noah 10 ברשותו הוּשְׁלַכְנוּ וכ׳ by his order we have been thrown (into the furnace) &c.; a. e.—Part. מוּשְׁלָךְ; f. מוּשְׁלֶכֶת &c. Gen. R. s. 8; Yalk. ib. 13, v. בלורין. Sifré Deut. 43 נבלת … שהיתה מוש׳ וכ׳ the corpse of J.… which lay exposed to heat in day-time and to cold &c. Midr. Prov. l. c. טורח … מוש׳ עליו the care for the household was thrown upon him (Reuben).
- same. Ex. R. s. 20 ולמה … נִשְׁלַכְתִּי לתוכה וכ׳ why did not Moses strike it (the Nile)? He said, I have been thrown into it, and it did not harm me &c.; a. e.
שָׁלָךְ
- (b. h.) name of a bird of prey, cormorant. Ḥull. 63ᵃ, v. שָׁלָה 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.
Forms in the corpus
The 108 distinct written forms H7993 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 48 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7993, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 111 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 121 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
- Genesis 21:15
- Exodus 1:22
- Leviticus 1:16
- Numbers 19:6
- Deuteronomy 9:17
- Joshua 8:29
- Judges 8:25
- 2 Samuel 11:21
- 1 Kings 13:24
- 2 Kings 2:16
- 2 Chronicles 7:20
- Job 15:33
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.
