שָׁנַן
to sharpen
‘to sharpen’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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”). Here: ‘whet’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Hithpolel
- The reflexive counterpart of the Polel.
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 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.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 3 times (33%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Hithpolel, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8150 appears — 9 distinct verses across 4 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.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 6:7 וְ/שִׁנַּנְתָּ֣/ם conj + Piel wpf 2ms + sfx pers 3mp and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
- Deuteronomy 32:41 שַׁנּוֹתִי֙ Qal pf 1cs If I whet my glittering sword, My hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my adversaries, Will recompense those who hate me.
Psalms 5 verses
- Psalms 45:5 שְׁנ֫וּנִ֥ים Qal ptcp.pass mp Your arrows are sharp. The nations fall under you, with arrows in the heart of the king's enemies.
- Psalms 64:3 שָׁנְנ֣וּ Qal pf 3cp Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, And aim their arrows, deadly words,
- Psalms 73:21 אֶשְׁתּוֹנָֽן Hithpolel impf 1cs For my soul was grieved. I was embittered in my heart.
- Psalms 120:4 שְׁנוּנִ֑ים Qal ptcp.pass mp Sharp arrows of the mighty, With coals of juniper.
- Psalms 140:3 שָֽׁנֲנ֣וּ Qal pf 3cp They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent. Viper's poison is under their lips. Selah.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 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, שנן (shânan) means “to sharpen.” Its uses cluster heavily in Psalms (56% of all occurrences). Spanning 9 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Deuteronomy 6:7. Across 3 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Piel). 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 H8150 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Psalms 5 verses 56%
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 22%
- Proverbs 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 22%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 11%
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: Are sharp 2×, Sharp 2×
- American Standard Version: Are sharp 2×, Sharp 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Are sharpened 1×, I sharpen 1×, I was pierced 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are sharp 1×, Are sharpened 1×, Have sharpened 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8150 across 9 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8150 across 9 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8150 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8150 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses one or more reduplicated stems (the Pōlēl/Pilpēl type), which for hollow or geminate roots behave much like Piel — often intensive or iterative.
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 3 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.
Qal
- whet, sharpen
Piel
- . teach the words incisively
Hithpō‛
- . in my kidneys I was pierced
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
[ שָׁנַן ] vb. whet, sharpen
— 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.
שָׁנַן
- (b. h.) to be pointed, sharp; to sharpen. —Part. pass. שָׁנוּן, pl. שְׁנוּנִים sharpened; trnsf. ready, quick. Pesik. Baḥod., p. 108ᵃ, a. e., v. שִׁנְאָן.
- 1. to sharpen; trnsf. (cmp. חדד) to teach diligently, v. שִׁינּוּן.
- 2. to brighten, cheer. Ab. d’R. N. ch. XVIII והיה מְשַׁנֵּן בה כל וכ׳ and with this (his disposition) he cheered all Israel’s scholars.
- 3. to speak distinctly. Y. Ber. III, 6ᵇ bot. לא מסתברא … משנן בפיו is it not evident that in reading the Sh’mʿa every one must recite it distinctly with his own mouth?
שְׁנַן
- Part. pass. שָׁנִין, שְׁנִינָא (שְנוּ׳); pl. שְׁנִינִין (שְׁנוּ׳). Targ. Prov. XXV, 18. Targ. Y. I Gen. III, 24 (Y. II שְׁנוּ׳, not שִׁנּוּ׳). Targ. Y. I Deut. XXXII, 41. Targ. Ps. CXX, 4 שני׳ ed. Lag. (oth. ed. שנו׳).
- to sharpen. Ib. LXIV, 4 שַׁנִּינוּ (ed. Wil. שְׁנִי׳). Targ. Jer. LI, 11. Targ. Y. II, Deut. l. c. אישני בברקא, read: אִישֵׁנֵּין כברקא.
- to be sharpened, polished. Targ. Ez. XXI, 15; a. e.
שָׁנָן
- (preced.) pointed rock, cliff. — Pl. שְׁנָנִים. Ohol. VIII, 2; cmp. שְׁנוּנִית.
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 9 distinct written forms H8150 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶשְׁתּוֹנָֽן | Verb, Hithpolel, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Psalms 73:21 | 1 |
| וְ/שִׁנַּנְתָּ֣/ם | Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 6:7 | 1 |
| שְׁנ֫וּנִ֥ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 45:5 | 1 |
| שְׁנוּנִ֑ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 120:4 | 1 |
| שְׁנוּנִ֔ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 5:28 | 1 |
| שַׁנּוֹתִי֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Deuteronomy 32:41 | 1 |
| שָֽׁנֲנ֣וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 140:3 | 1 |
| שָׁנ֑וּן | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 25:18 | 1 |
| שָׁנְנ֣וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 64:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8150, 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 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
