שָׁתָה
to drink
‘to drink’ is one of 2 main senses 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”). Here: ‘of man’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
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.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H8354 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 14 distinct verses. 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.
Isaiah
- Isaiah 5:22 לִ/שְׁתּ֣וֹת prep + Qal inf.cs Woe to those who are mighty to drink wine, And champions at mixing strong drink;
- Isaiah 21:5 שָׁתֹ֑ה Qal inf.abs They prepare the table, they set the watch, they eat, they drink: rise up, you princes, anoint the shield.
- Isaiah 22:13 וְ/שָׁת֣וֹת וְ/שָׁת֔וֹ conj + Qal inf.abs conj + Qal inf.abs and behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.
- Isaiah 24:9 יִשְׁתּוּ לְ/שֹׁתָֽי/ו Qal impf 3mp prep + Qal ptcp.act mp cs + sfx pers 3ms They shall not drink wine with a song; strong drink shall be bitter to those who drink it.
- Isaiah 29:8 שֹׁתֶ֔ה Qal ptcp.act ms It shall be as when a hungry man dreams, and, behold, he eats; but he awakes, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreams, and, behold, he drinks; but he awakes, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul has appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against Mount Zion.
- Isaiah 36:12 וְ/לִ/שְׁתּ֛וֹת conj + prep + Qal inf.cs But Rabshakeh said, Has my master sent me to your master, and to you, to speak these words? [has he] not [sent me] to the men who sit on the wall, to eat their own dung, and to drink their own water with you?
- Isaiah 36:16 וּ/שְׁת֖וּ conj + Qal impv 2mp Don't listen to Hezekiah: for thus says the king of Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me; and eat you everyone of his vine, and everyone of his fig tree, and drink you everyone the waters of his own cistern;
- Isaiah 37:25 וְ/שָׁתִ֣יתִי conj + Qal pf 1cs I have dug and drunk water, and with the sole of my feet will I dry up all the rivers of Egypt.
- Isaiah 44:12 שָׁ֥תָה Qal pf 3ms The smith [makes] an axe, and works in the coals, and fashions it with hammers, and works it with his strong arm: yes, he is hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water, and is faint.
- Isaiah 51:17 שָׁתִ֛ית שָׁתִ֖ית Qal pf 2fs Qal pf 2fs Awake, awake, stand up, Jerusalem, that have drunk at the hand of Yahweh the cup of his wrath; you have drunken the bowl of the cup of staggering, and drained it.
- Isaiah 51:22 לִ/שְׁתּוֹתָ֖/הּ prep + Qal inf.cs + sfx pers 3fs Thus says your Lord Yahweh, and your God who pleads the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of staggering, even the bowl of the cup of my wrath; you shall no more drink it again:
- Isaiah 62:8 יִשְׁתּ֤וּ Qal impf 3mp Yahweh has sworn by his right hand, and by the arm of his strength, Surely I will no more give your grain to be food for your enemies; and foreigners shall not drink your new wine, for which you have labored:
- Isaiah 62:9 יִשְׁתֻּ֖/הוּ Qal impf 3mp + sfx pers 3ms but those who have garnered it shall eat it, and praise Yahweh; and those who have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.
- Isaiah 65:13 יִשְׁתּ֖וּ Qal impf 3mp Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but you shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but you shall be disappointed;
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.
שתה — transliterated shâthâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to drink.” Debuting at Genesis 9:21, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 193 verses in 34 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Qal and Niphal. From the same root come משתה, שתה and שתי. 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 H8354 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 →
- 193
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 193 distinct verses.
- 34 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 34 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #219
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 219 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 193 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 193 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 107 verses · 55%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 45 verses · 23%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 41 verses · 21%
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 102×, Drinking 10×, Drunk 6×
- American Standard Version: Drink 88×, Drinking 8×, Drunk 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Drink 91×, Drank 19×, Drinking 16×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Drink 88×, Drinking 17×, Drank 15×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8354 across 217 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 62 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 H8354 across 219 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 73 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 H8354 across 212 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 40 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 5 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8354 across 233 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 37 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
10 senses and sub-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.
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 10 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
- Pf. 3 ms. שׁ׳ Ex 34:28 +, 1 s. שָׁתִ֫יתִי 1 S 15 +, etc.; Impf. 3 ms. יִשְׁתֶּה Gn 44:5 +, וַיִּשְׁתֶּה 1 K 19:8, usually וַיֵּשְׁתְּ Gn 9:21 +; juss. וְיֵשְׁתְּ 1 K 13:18; 3 fs. וַתֵּשְׁתְּ Nu 20:11; 2 ms. apoc. תֵּשְׁתְּ Ju 13:14 +, וַתֵּשְׁתְּ 1 K 13:22; 1 s. וָאֵשְׁתְּ Gn 24:46; 3 mpl. יִשְׁתָּי֑וּן ψ 78:44, etc.; Imv. ms. שְׁתֵה Gn 24:14 +, etc.; Inf. abs. שָׁתֹה Is 21:5; Je 49:12 (in 1 S 1:9 after prep., anom., Ges§ 113 e, om. 𝔊 Th We Dr and mod.), שָׁתוֹ Je 25:28 +, שָׁתוֹת Is 22:13 (Ges§ 75 n); cstr. שְׁתוֹ †Pr 31:4, שְׁתוֹת Je 35:8, 14, לִשְׁתֹּת Gn 24:19 +, sf. שְׁתוֹתוֹ 1 K 13:33, לִשְׁתּוֹתָהּ Is 51:22 etc.; Pt. act. שֹׁתֶה Is 29:8 +, f. שֹׁתָה Jb 6:4, etc.;— e.g. Exodus 34:28
- 1.
- a. of man: drink, water, wine, etc., Ex 34:28 (JE), cf. 15:24 (J), 1 S 30:12 Am 2:8; 4:8; 5:11; Is 5:22; 62:8, 9; Pr 31:4, Ju 13:4, 7, 14 + often (2 times JE; 6 times D); by measure (short allowance) Ez 4:11, 16; milk †Ez 25:4, cf. Ct 5:1; blood 1 Ch 11:19 (fig. of water gained by hazard); fig. חֲמָתָם שֹׁתָה רוּחִי Jb 6:4 whose venom [of arrows of י׳] my spirit drinks up; acc. + מִן of source †Ex 7:18 (J), v 21 (E), 15:23 (J), Pr 5:15 (fig.); acc. (of wine, water, etc.) om. Gn 24:14(×2); 27:25; 43:34 (all J) + 11 times J, Ex 7:24; 17:6 (E), Nu 20:5 (JE), v 11; 33:14 (P), Ju 15:19 + often; acc. שׁין †2 K 18:27 = Is 36:12; מַמְתַקִּים Ne 8:10; abs. Ec 2:24 +; + מִן of source 1 K 17:4, 6 ψ 110:7, מִכֹּסוֹ 2 S 12:3; שׁ׳ בְּמִזְרְקֵי יַיִן † Am 6:6, cf. Gn 44:5; שׁ׳ בְּיַיִן †Pr 9:5; c. מִן partit. Gn 9:21; Ex 7:24; Ru 2:9, also (fig.) Je 51:7 (and Jb 21:20 infra). e.g. Exodus 34:28
- b. pt. as subst. שֹׁתֵי מַיִם Ez 31:14, 16, שֹׁתֵי יַיִן Jo 1:5; שׁוֹתֵי שֵׁכָר ψ 69:13. e.g. Ezekiel 31:14
- c. drink wine in sacrificial feast Dt 32:38 (poem); blood of sacrificial victim ψ 50:13 (fig. of י׳). e.g. Deuteronomy 32:38
- d. subj. animals Nu 20:19; Jon 3:7 (both + men), also (fig.) Ez 34:18, 19; acc. (water) om. Gn 24:19, 22; 30:38(×2). e.g. Numbers 20:19
- e. fig. of drinking cup of י׳’s wrath, שׁ׳ אֶת־כּוֹס חֲמָתוֹ Is 51:17 (+ מִיַּד י׳), cf. v 17, v 22, v. also Ez 23:32, 34 and (acc. om.) Je 25:16, 26, 27 + 8 times Je, Hb 2:16; abs. Ob 16(×3); acc. שְׁמָרִים ψ 75:9; שׁ׳ מֵחֲמַת שַׁדַּי Jb 21:20. e.g. Isaiah 51:17
- f. drink blood, fig. of slaughter, Nu 23:24 (JE; of lion, metaph. of Isr.), Zc 9:15 (read דָּמָם for הָמוּ 𝔊 Codd. Sta Now Marti); so (blood of י׳’s sacrifice) Ez 39:17, 18, 19. e.g. Numbers 23:24
- g. fig. of wicked deeds: יֵין חֲמָסִים יִשְׁתּוּ Pr 4:17 (‖ לָֽחֲמוּ לֶחֶם רֶשַׁע; these are their food and drink), cf. Jb 15:16; 34:7, but Pr 26:6 appar. = suffers violence (cf. De Toy). e.g. Proverbs 4:17
- 2. late, = feast Est 3:15; 7:1 (cf. מִשְׁתֶּה). e.g. Esther 3:15
Niphal
- Impf. 3 ms. יִשָּׁתֶה Lv 11:34 (P) all which is (may be) drunk, c. ב of vessel.—נִשְׁתָּ֑וָה Pr 27:15 v. I. שׁוה ad fin. For cause, give, to drink v. שׁקה. e.g. Leviticus 11:34
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
vb. drink (NH id.; Assyrian šatû, Ethiopic ሰትየ Old Aramaic שתה, Aramaic שְׁתָא, אִשְׁתִּי, [ܫܬܐ], ܐܶܫܬܻܝ]; Sab. שתי DHMZMG xxxvii (1883), 403 HomChr 124);—
— 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.
שָׁתָה
- , v. שתי
שתי
- (b. h.) [to be settled, satisfied,] to drink. Pes. 86ᵇ השׁוֹתֶה כוסו וכ׳ he who drinks his cupful at one draught is called greedy (גַּרְגְּרָן). Ber. 51ᵃ מקבלו … ושׁוֹתֵהוּ בשמאל he must receive it (the medicine, v. אִסְפַּרְגּוֹס) with his right hand, and drink it (take it to his lips) with his left hand. Ib.ᵇ השותה כפלים he who drinks an even number of cups (v. זוּג). Tosef. Sot. XV, 11; B. Bath. 60ᵇ כשחרב … ושלא לִשְׁתּוֹת יין when the Temple was destroyed, … there were many scrupulous persons (פרושים, determined) not to eat meat nor drink wine. Ib. נִשְׁתֶּה יין וכ׳ should we drink wine, of which libations were offered on the altar? Ib. מים לא נשתה וכ׳ then let us drink no water, because water libation has ceased. Keth. 8ᵇ רבים שָׁתוּ רבים יִשְׁתּוּ many have drank (the cup of mourning), many shall drink, v. מִשְׁתֶּה. Nidd. 24ᵇ כמה … שָׁתַת אמו וכ׳ how much unmixed wine the mother of this embryo must have drunk!; a. fr.—Part. pass. שָׁתוּי being under the influence of drink. Erub. 64ᵃ שְׁתוּי יין אל וכ׳ Ms. M. (ed. only שָׁ׳) one feeling the wine must not pray, contrad. to שִׁכּוֹר, q. v. Lev. R. s. 12 שנכנסו שְׁתוּיֵי יין וכ׳ they (Nadab and Abihu) entered the Tabernacle while under the influence of wine; a. fr.—[Hif. from שָׁקָה q. v.]
שתי ²
- [to settle,]
- 1. to lay the foundation of; v. שָׁתַת II.
- 2. to fix the warp, start the loom, v. שְׁתִי.
- 1. to found, establish, v. שָׁתַת II.
- 2. to weave. Midr. Sam. ch. XIX (ref. to נסכתי, Ps. II, 6) הִשְׁתֵּיתִיו I have woven him (established him, ref. to מסכת, Jud. XVI, 14); Yalk. Is. 338; Yalk. Ps. 620 השיתיו (corr. acc.). e.g. Psalms 2:6
- to be established, started. Y. Yoma V, 42ᶜ, v. שְׁתִיָּה II; a. e.
- same. Tosef. Yoma III (II), 6 ed. Zuck. (Var. נשתת), v. שָׁתַת II
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 155 distinct written forms H8354 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 95 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8354, 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 185 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 193 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 9:21
- Exodus 7:18
- Leviticus 10:9
- Numbers 6:3
- Deuteronomy 2:6
- Judges 7:5
- Ruth 2:9
- 1 Samuel 1:9
- 2 Samuel 11:11
- 1 Kings 1:25
- 2 Kings 3:17
- 1 Chronicles 11:18
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.
