שָׁרַק
to hiss
also: whistle, pipe 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
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- 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).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 6 times (50%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 3 times (25%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8319 appears — 12 distinct verses across 8 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.
1 Kings 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 5:26 וְ/שָׁ֥רַק conj + Qal wpf 3ms He will lift up a banner to the nations from far, And he will whistle for them from the end of the earth. Behold, they will come speedily and swiftly.
- Isaiah 7:18 יִשְׁרֹ֤ק Qal impf 3ms It will happen in that day that Yahweh will whistle for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
Jeremiah 3 verses
- Jeremiah 19:8 וְ/יִשְׁרֹ֖ק conj + Qal impf 3ms I will make this city an astonishment, and a hissing; everyone who passes thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues of it.
- Jeremiah 49:17 וְ/יִשְׁרֹ֖ק conj + Qal impf 3ms Edom shall become an astonishment: everyone who passes by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues of it.
- Jeremiah 50:13 וְ/יִשְׁרֹ֖ק conj + Qal impf 3ms Because of the wrath of Yahweh she shall not be inhabited, but she shall be wholly desolate: everyone who goes by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.
Lamentations 2 verses
- Lamentations 2:15 שָֽׁרְקוּ֙ Qal pf 3cp All that pass by clap their hands at you; They hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, [saying], Is this the city that men called The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
- Lamentations 2:16 שָֽׁרְקוּ֙ Qal pf 3cp All your enemies have opened their mouth wide against you; They hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up; Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.
Ezekiel 1 verse
Zephaniah 1 verse
Zechariah 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 שרק centers on the idea of “to hiss.” Its earliest occurrence is 1 Kings 9:8. Spanning 12 verses in 8 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Jeremiah dominates its distribution — 3 of 12 verses. Lexicons map it across 2 senses — beyond “to hiss” it also covers “whistle” and “pipe”. 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 H8319 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Jeremiah 3 verses 25%
- Isaiah 2 verses 17%
- Lamentations 2 verses 17%
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 12 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 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: Shall hiss 6×, Hiss 2×
- American Standard Version: Hiss 3×, Shall hiss 3×, Will hiss 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Hisses 2×, They hiss 2×, Will hiss 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Will hiss 3×, They hiss 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8319 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H8319 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H8319 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H8319 across 10 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.
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses 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.
- to hiss, whistle, pipe
- (Qal) to hiss (as a signal)
Word origin
שָׁרַק vb. hiss, perh. also, whistle, pipe
— 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.
רִיקּוּחַ
- perfume.—Pl. רִיקּוּחִים, רִקּ. Tanḥ. Sh’moth 14, v. רִיכּוּךְ.
רַק
- , v. רָקַק, רְקַק.
רֹק
- , v. רוֹק
רַק ²
- only, except.—Pl. רַקִּין use of the word רַק. Gen. R. s. 1; Y. Ber. IX, 14ᵇ bot., v. אַךְ I.
רֵק
- , v. רֵיק, רֵיקָא.
שָׂרָק
- paint, v. סָרָק.
שָׁרַק
- onomatop.) to hiss, whistle; to quack. Ex. R. s. 10 צפרדע … ושָׁרְקָה להם וכ׳ there was one frog, and it quacked for them (other frogs), and they came; Snh. 67ᵇ; Yalk. Ex. 183.
שְׁרַק
- Targ. Lam. II, 15, sq. Targ. Job XXVII, 23.—Ḥull. 63ᵃ ההוא … כרבא וש׳ one (bird raḥam) sat among cabbage and whistled. Ib. יתיב אמידי ושָׁרֵיק רקרק Ar. (ed. ועביד שרקרק, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. notes 40, 50) sits on some object (not on the ground), and sings raḳraḳ; אי יתיב אערעא ושריק וכ׳ when it sits on the ground and sings, the Messiah will come; Yalk. Lev. 537.
שְׁרַק II
- = שְׁרַג, to glide, slide. Nidd. 3ᵇ מיא שָׁרְקֵי וכ׳ water (when poured out of an inclined vessel) slides, but fruits do not slide (and you must invert the vessel in order to empty it). Ḥull. 111ᵃ דמא מִשְׁרַק שָׁרֵיק (Ms. R. 2, a. Ar. משרג שריג, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 60) blood glides off, v. סְרַךְ II.
- to cause to slip, make slippery. B. Kam. 30ᵇ top תבנו … דמְשָׁרְקֵי the Mishnah speaks of straw and stubble (deposited in the public road), because they make the ground slippery.
- to slip, glide. Zeb. 62ᵃ דלא נִשְׁתָּרְקוּ (Rashi to Ex. XXVII, 5 יִשְׁתָּרְגוּ) that the priests might not slip. Ḥull. 52ᵃ כל מידי דמִישְּׁרִיק וכ׳ (some ed. דמִשְּׁ׳, Rashi דמִשְׁתְּרִיק; Ms. H. דמשתריג … לא סריג וכ׳, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 90) in the case of an animal falling on things which slide (e.g. a pile of peas &c.), no internal injury is to be apprehended, but if it falls on things which do not slide &c. e.g. Exodus 27:5
שְׁרַק III
- (v.סָרַק III) to paint; to paste (with red or yellow clay). Y. Sabb. VII, 10ᶜ top דשָׁרְקָא אפה who paints her face (on the Sabbath); דש׳ מעזלה who paints her yarn (to rub her face with it; v. Tosef. Sabb. IX (X), 13, quot. s. v. סָרָק). Ned. 90ᵃ top שַׁרְקֵיה טינא וכ׳ he painted the man’s face with clay (to disguise him), and brought him &c.; (Tosaf.: he smeared clay over his garments). Bets. 32ᵇ דמר שָׁרְקִין ליה תנורא וכ׳ that they smear (fill up the cracks of) the stove for you on the Holy Day.—Part. pass. שְׁרִיקָא. Ab. Zar. 31ᵃ ש׳ וחתימא pasted with clay and sealed.
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 H8319 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/יִשְׁרֹ֖ק | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Jeremiah 19:8 | 3 |
| שָֽׁרְקוּ֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Lamentations 2:15 | 2 |
| אֶשְׁרְקָ֥ה | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Zechariah 10:8 | 1 |
| וְ/יִשְׁרֹ֥ק | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 27:23 | 1 |
| וְ/שָׁ֥רַק | Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 5:26 | 1 |
| וְ/שָׁרָ֑ק | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 9:8 | 1 |
| יִשְׁרֹ֖ק | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Zephaniah 2:15 | 1 |
| יִשְׁרֹ֤ק | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 7:18 | 1 |
| שָׁרְק֖וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Ezekiel 27:36 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8319, 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
- משרוקי mashrôwqîy H4953 pipe
- שרוקה shᵉrûwqâh H8292 piping
- שרק sâruq H8320 bay
- שרק sôrêq H8321 choice grapes
- שרקה shᵉrêqâh H8322 hissing
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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
- 1 Kings 9:8
- Job 27:23
- Isaiah 5:26
- Jeremiah 19:8
- Lamentations 2:15
- Ezekiel 27:36
- Zephaniah 2:15
- Zechariah 10:8
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.
