שָׁקָה
to water
‘to water’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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”). Here: ‘cause to drink water’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- 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”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 distinct verse where H8248 appears in the Niphal stem, across 1 book. 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.
Amos 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.
The Hebrew verb שקה centers on the idea of “to water.” Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 2:6. It turns up in 60 verses across 21 books, a moderately common footprint. The word gravitates to Genesis (30%), then Psalms and Jeremiah. The verb spans 3 stems, from Hiphil to Qal. Dig into 60-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8248 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 →
- 60
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 60 distinct verses.
- 21 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 21 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #623
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 623 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 60 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 60 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 27 verses · 45%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 30%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 15 verses · 25%
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: Drink 25×, Butler 7×, Watered 5×
- American Standard Version: Drink 24×, Butler 7×, Water 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Drink 15×, Water 6×, Watered 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Drink 16×, Water 6×, Watered 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8248 across 82 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 31 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8248 across 82 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 36 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 H8248 across 62 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 27 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 H8248 across 87 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 42 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
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 Pual (the passive of Piel).
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 5 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.
Hiphil
- cause to drink water, give to drink (NH Hiph. id.; Arabic سَقَى i. give to drink; Sab. סקי be irrigated Fell ZMG liv (1900), 246, מסקי drinks Hom Chr 124, מסתקין id. DHM Hofmus., No. 1, 1.7; Ethiopic ሰቀየ: water, irrigate; Assyrian šaḳû i. = Heb. Hiph., Aramaic שְׁקָא, ܫܩܳܐ Aph.);—for
Qal
- v. I. שָׁתָה;—Pf. 3 ms. consec. וְהִשְׁקָה Gn 2:6 +, sf. וְהִשְׁקָהּ Nu 5:27; 2 ms. consec. וְהִשְׁקִיתָ Nu 20:8 +; 1 s. consec. וְהִשְׁקֵיתִי Ez 32:6, etc.; Impf. 3 ms. יַשְׁקֶה Nu 5:26, וַיַּשְׁקְ Gn 29:10 +, etc.; Imv. ms. sf. הַשְׁקֵ֫הוּ Pr 25:21; fs. sf. הַשְׁקִ֫ינִי Gn 24:43 +; Inf. cstr. הַשְׁקוֹת Gn 2:10 +, sf. הַשְׁקֹתוֹ 24:19; Pt. מַשְׁקֶה ψ 104:13, cstr. Hb 2:15 (v. also i., ii. מַשְׁקֶה);— e.g. Genesis 2:6
- 1. irrigate, ground: subj. man Dt 11:10, mist Gn 2:6, river v 10 (both J), spring Jo 4:18; subj. י׳ Is 27:3 (כֶּרֶם), Ez 17:7 (גֶּפֶן), both in fig., fig. also 32:6 water land מִדָּם; lit. c. מִן of source ψ 104:13 (הָרִים) and (subj. man) Ec 2:6 (יַעַר). e.g. Deuteronomy 11:10
- 2. water, give drink to, usually human subj., acc. of beast, Gn 24:14, 46(×2); 29:2 (מִן of source), v 3, 7, 8, 10 Ex 2:16, 17, 19 (all J), ψ 104:11 (subj. springs); acc. pers. Gn 21:19 (E), 24:18, 19, 45 (J), Hb 2:15 (fig.), Is 43:20 (י׳ subj.), ψ 78:15 (id.), 2 Ch 28:15, c. ב of vessel Est 1:7; c. acc. pers. et animal. Nu 20:8 (P); give one something to drink, acc. pers. + rei (water, wine, etc.), Am 2:12; Gn 19:32, 33, 34, 35; 24:43; Nu 5:24, 26; Ju 4:19 1 S 30:11; 2 S 23:15 = 1 Ch 11:15; Jb 22:7, cf. Ct 8:2 (מִיַּיִן); fig. Je 8:14; 9:14; 16:7; 23:15; 25:15 ψ 69:22, cf. וְנַחַל עֲדָנֶיךָ תַשְׁקֵם 36:9, and וַתַּשְׁקֵ֫מוֹ בִּדְמָעוֹת 80:6; acc. rei om., lit. Ju 4:19; Ex 32:20 (E), fig. Je 25:17.—Vid. also i. מַשְׁקֶה infra. e.g. Genesis 24:14
Pual
- Impf. 3 ms. וּמֹחַ עַצְמוֹתָיו יְשֻׁקֶּה Jb 21:24 the marrow of his bones is watered, (refreshed, invigorated).—נשׁקה Am 8:8 v. שׁקע. e.g. Job 21:24
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
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.
שָׁקָה
- , v. שקי
שקי
- [(cmp. שקע) to settle.]
- cmp. שָׁתָה) to give drink; to water. M. Kat. I, 1 מַשְׁקִין בית וכ׳ you may water a field that depends on irrigation during the festive week &c. Keth. 111ᵇ ממַשְׁקֵהוּ חלב, v. שֵׁן. Cant. R. to I, 12; Num. R. s. 113 ומשה מַשְׁקֶה and Moses gave drink (to those who were being circumcised). Eduy. V, 6 אין משקין וכ׳ we do not give the testing waters to a proselyte (v. סוֹטָה). Ib. דוגמא הִשְׁקוּהָ, v. דּוּגְמָא; Ber. 19ᵃ; a. fr.
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 53 distinct written forms H8248 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8248, 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
- משקה mashqeh H4945 drink
- שקו shiqquv H8249 drink
- שקוי shiqqûwy H8250 drink
- שקת shôqeth H8268 watering trough
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 57 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 60 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 2:6
- Exodus 2:16
- Numbers 5:24
- Deuteronomy 11:10
- Judges 4:19
- 1 Samuel 30:11
- 2 Samuel 23:15
- 1 Chronicles 11:17
- 2 Chronicles 28:15
- Esther 1:7
- Job 21:24
- Psalms 36:8
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.
