שַׂק
sackcloth
also: mesh, sack, sacking fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 verse where H8242 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Genesis. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
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.
שק — transliterated saq — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “sackcloth.” Debuting at Genesis 37:34, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 46 verses in 19 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. It also covers “mesh”, “sack”, and “sacking”, alongside “sackcloth” — see its full sense range. From the same root come שקק, משק and σακκος. 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 H8242 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 →
- 46
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 46 distinct verses.
- 19 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 19 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #767
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 767 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 46 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 46 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 29 verses · 63%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 26%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 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: Sackcloth 30×, Themselves with sackcloth 3×, You with sackcloth 3×
- American Standard Version: Sackcloth 27×, Themselves with sackcloth 3×, You with sackcloth 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sackcloth 40×, Sack 3×, Sacks 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sackcloth 41×, And 2×, Sack 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8242 across 48 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H8242 across 48 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H8242 across 47 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8242 across 48 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.
- 1. sack, for grain Gn 42:25, 27 (‖ אַמְתַּחַת), v 35(×2) (E), Jos 9:4 (JE), perhaps also Lv 11:32 (P). e.g. Genesis 42:25
- 2. sackcloth:
- a. worn in mourning and humiliation (v. NowArch. i. 192 f. SACookEncy. Bib. s.v.), either loose garment like sack, or piece of similar material (of rough, dark hair), fastened round body: put (שִׂים) on loins Gn 37:34 (J), 1 K 20:31, on (bare) flesh 21:27 2 K 6:30, cf. Je 48:37 Jb 16:15 (c. תָּפַר); וְהַעֲלֵיתִי עַל־כָּל־מָתְנַיִם שׂ׳ Am 8:10; usually חָגַר שַק 2 S 3:31 Is 15:3; 22:12, cf. 3:24, Je 4:8; 6:26; 49:3 Ez 7:18; 27:31 1 K 20:32 Jo 1:8 La 2:10; כִּסָּה בַּשּׂ׳ 2 K 19:1, 2 = Is 37:1, 2, Jon 3:6, 8 1 Ch 21:16, fig. of heavens (cf. קָדַר), שׂ׳ אָשִׂים כְּסוּתָם Is 50:3; late לָבַשׁ שׂ׳ put on sackcloth Jon 3:5 Est 4:1, cf. v:2 ψ 35:13; 69:12; בְּצוֹם וְשׂ׳ Ne 9:1, cf. Dn 9:3; פִּתַּח שׂ׳ loosen sackcloth Is 20:2 (+ מֵעַל), ψ 30:12 (opp. שִׂמְחָה), הֵסִיר שׂ׳ מֵעַל Est 4:4. e.g. Genesis 37:34
- b. same garment (or material) spread out (to lie on), 2 S 21:10 (c. הִטָּה), Is 58:5 (c. הִצִּיעַ), cf. Est 4:3; וַיִּשְׁכַּב בַּשׂ׳ 1 K 21:27, לִינוּ בַּשּׂ׳ Jo 1:13. e.g. 2 Samuel 21:10
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
n.m. Jos 9:4 sack sackcloth (v. SchwallyZAW xi (1891), 173 who conj. Egyptian origin; NH סַק sackcloth (rare); Assyrian šaḳḳu, sack (DlHWB 687 a), sackcloth (WklAltor. Forsch. vi. 44); Ethiopic ሠቅ = BH; Aramaic סַקָּא, ܣܰܩܳܐ; Gk. σάκκος LewyFremdw. 87);—abs. שׂ׳ Gn 37:34 +, שָׂ֑ק Je 48:37 +; sf. שַׂקִּי ψ 30:12, etc.; pl. שַׂקִּים Jos 9:4 +, sf. שַׂקֵּיהֶם Gn 42:35;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שקק (shâqaq) (H8264) — to run.
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.
שֹׁק
- , v. שׁוֹק
שַׂק
- (b. h.) sack, sackcloth. Sifra Sh’mini, Par. 6, ch. VIII (ref. to Lev. XI, 32) מה שק מיוחד וכ׳ as sack, which is specified, is something spun and woven &c.; Sabb. 64ᵃ. Sifra l. c. אין לי אלא שק העשוי וכ׳ I may think that only sackcloth made of goats’ hair is meant. Succ. 20ᵇ; Tosef. Kel. B. Bath. IV, 14 של שק a mat made of sackcloth. Snh. 101ᵃ התורה חוגרת שק וכ׳ the Torah, girt with sackcloth, stands before the Lord &c.; a. fr.—Pl. שַׂקִּים, שַׂקִּין. Sabb. 62ᵃ, v. סַק II; a. e. e.g. Leviticus 11:32
שַׂק ²
- ch., v. סַק, סַקָּא.
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 32 distinct written forms H8242 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8242, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 40 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 46 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 37:34
- Leviticus 11:32
- Joshua 9:4
- 2 Samuel 3:31
- 1 Kings 21:27
- 2 Kings 6:30
- 1 Chronicles 21:16
- Esther 4:1
- Job 16:15
- Psalms 30:11
- Isaiah 3:24
- Jeremiah 4:8
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.
