שֶׁ֫קֶץ
abomination
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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H8263 appears — 11 distinct verses across 3 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.
Leviticus 9 verses
- Leviticus 7:21 שֶׁ֣קֶץ n c ms When anyone touches any unclean thing, the uncleanness of man, or an unclean animal, or any unclean abomination, and eats some of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace offerings, which belong to Yahweh, that soul shall be cut off from his people.'"
- Leviticus 11:10 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms All that don't have fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of all the living creatures that are in the waters, they are an abomination to you,
- Leviticus 11:11 וְ/שֶׁ֖קֶץ conj + n c ms and you detest them. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall detest their carcasses.
- Leviticus 11:12 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms Whatever has no fins nor scales in the waters, that is an abomination to you.
- Leviticus 11:13 שֶׁ֣קֶץ n c ms "'These you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the vulture, and the black vulture,
- Leviticus 11:20 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms "'All flying insects that walk on all fours are an abomination to you.
- Leviticus 11:23 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms But all winged creeping things which have four feet, are an abomination to you.
- Leviticus 11:41 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms "'Every creeping thing that creeps on the earth is an abomination. It shall not be eaten.
- Leviticus 11:42 שֶׁ֥קֶץ n c ms Whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet, even all creeping things that creep on the earth, them you shall not eat; for they are an abomination.
Isaiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 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.
שקץ — transliterated sheqets — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “abomination.” More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Leviticus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 11 verses — uncommon. Debuting at Leviticus 7:21, it then recurs through the corpus. It shares a root with שקץ and שקוץ. 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 H8263 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 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 11 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 9 verses · 82%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 18%
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†: Shall be an abomination 4×, They are an abomination 2×
- American Standard Version†: Abomination 2×, Are an abomination unto you 2×, They are an abomination 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Are detestable 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Are a detestable thing 3×, Detestable thing 3×, Is a detestable thing 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8263 across 11† 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 H8263 across 11† 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 H8263 across 11† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8263 across 12† 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.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- detestable thing or idol, an unclean thing, an abomination, detestation
Word origin
I. n.m. Dn 11:31 detested thing;—abs. שִׁקּוּץ Dn 11:31; 12:11, cstr. שִׁקֻּץ 1 K 11:5 +; pl. שִׁקּוּצִים 2 Ch 15:8, שִׁקֻּצִים 2 K 23:24; cstr. שִׁקּוּצֵי Ez 20:7, 8; sf. שִׁקּוּצֵיהֶם Je 16:18 +, etc.—detested thing, epith. of Isr. Ho 9:10 (si vera l.; not elsewhere bef. Dt); of filth Na 3:6; appar. of unclean food Zc 9:7 (as שֶׁקֶץ); of idols (often ‖ תּוֹעֵבָה, גִּלּוּל, etc.), Dt 29:16; 2 K 23:13, 24; Is 66:3; Je 4:1; 7:30 = 32:34; 13:27; 16:18; Ez 5:11; 7:20; 11:18, 21; 20:7, 8, 30; 37:23; of idolatrous practices Dn 9:27, but read prob. as 11:31 (so 𝔊 Θ), and כַּנּוֹ for כנף (v. Dr); שׁ׳ (םְ)שֹׁמֵם 11:31; 12:11 detested thing causing horror is the heathen altar erected in temple by Ant. Epiph., with (prob.) a statue of Zeus Olympios = (Ph.) בעלשמם lord of heaven; the prophet puts שִׁקּוּץ for בעל, and (םְ)שֹׁמֵם) for שָׁמַיִם; cf. NesZAW iv (1884), 248 CheOP 105 Dr Dn.
I. n.m. Lv 7:21 detestation, detestable thing;—שׁ׳ of the ceremonially unclean Lv 7:21; creatures forbidden as food: water animals without fins or scales 11:10, 11, 12, birds of prey, etc., v 13, winged creeping things v 20, 23, creeping vermin v 41, 42 (all P), cf. Is 66:17 (+ בְּשַׂר הַחֲזִיר, הָעַכְבָּר); v. RSSem. i. 275, 2nd ed. 293; K 309 f., 2nd ed. 311 f.—Ez 8:10 read prob. שִׁקּוּצִים, v. שִׁקּוּץ.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שקץ (shâqats) (H8262) — to detest.
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.
שָׁקַץ
- v. קוּץ) to loathe.—Denom. שֶׁקֶץ.
- to abominate, detest, make abominable. Macc. 16ᵇ, a. e. עובר משום לא תְשַׁקְּציּ transgresses the law, ‘ye shall not make yourselves abominable’ (Lev. XX, 25).—Part. pass. מְשׁוּקָּץ. Yeb. 63ᵇ שאין לך מש׳ ומתועב וכ׳ for none is more detested and abhorred before the Lord than he that walks naked &c. Cant. R. to I, 9 (ref. to Ps. CVI, 20) אין לך מנוול ומש׳ וכ׳ nothing is so repulsive and disgusting as a grass-eating ox; a. e. e.g. Leviticus 20:25
- to become loathsome, abominable. Pesik. R. s. 31 והיו מִשְׁתַּקְּצוֹת וכ׳, v. עָזַב.
שְׁקַץ
- Pa. שַׁקֵּץ as preced. Pi. Targ. Deut. VII, 26. Targ. Lev. XI, 43; a. fr.—Part. pass. מְשַׁקַּץ. Targ. Is. XXVIII, 8 (not מְשַׁקֵּץ; some ed. מְשֻׁקַּץ, Hebraism).
שֶׁקֶץ
- preced.) abomination, abominable thing, esp. (v. Lev. XX, 25) unclean animal. Tosef. Nidd. II, 3 מכאן … כיונק ש׳ after that (after the child is twenty-four months old) it is like sucking unclean matter; Y. ib. I, 49ᵇ; Keth. 60ᵃ.—Pl. שְׁקָצִים. Nidd. III, 2 ש׳ ורמשים forbidden animals and reptiles. Snh. VIII, 2 ש׳ ורמשים all kinds of forbidden food; a. fr. e.g. Leviticus 20:25
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 H8263 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| שֶׁ֥קֶץ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 11:10 | 6 |
| שֶׁ֣קֶץ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 7:21 | 2 |
| וְ/הַ/שֶּׁ֖קֶץ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 66:17 | 1 |
| וְ/שֶׁ֖קֶץ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 11:11 | 1 |
| שֶׁ֔קֶץ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 8:10 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8263, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 11 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
