shachath
a pit
The word
H7845
Where it stands
shachath is tagged 23 times, across 6 books: psalms 9 · job 7 · ezekiel 3 · isaiah 2 · jonah 1 · proverbs 1.
Versions differ here
- {"n":"Psalm 16:10","s":"Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Shachat most literally means pit, the grave, with decay only as an extension.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=psalm-16-10","r":"Psalm 16:10","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Most versions read corruption or decay, following the extended, figurative sense the Septuagint's Greek diaphthora already carries and that Peter's speech in Acts 2:27 explicitly builds its resurrection argument on."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"English corruption names a process, decaying, rotting. Hebrew shachat more literally names a place, the pit or grave itself. Saying someone will not see the pit is a slightly different claim from saying they will not experience decay, though the two ideas sit close enough together that the shift from one sense to the other carries real theological weight."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Shachat's root sense is pit, the grave as a physical location; its extended, figurative sense as corruption or decay is a natural association, since a body left in a pit decays, but it is genuinely a step beyond the word's most literal meaning. The Septuagint translates it with Greek diaphthora, decay or corruption, and Peter's sermon in Acts 2:27, 31 builds directly on that Greek sense to argue Jesus's body did not decay in the tomb, an argument that depends on reading shachat through its Greek translation's extended sense rather than its bare Hebrew literal one."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"English corruption commits to the figurative, decay-focused sense; a more literal English rendering, the pit or the grave, would describe David's hope in terms of place rather than process, a real difference in emphasis that the New Testament's own use of this verse leans into rather than flattens."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"A New Testament argument that depends on one specific sense of an Old Testament word is worth checking twice: is that sense the word's most literal one, or an extension the Greek translation makes more explicit than the Hebrew does on its own? Both can be legitimate, but they are not identical claims."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"Corruption or decay follows the Septuagint and the New Testament's own argument, reading the verse as a resurrection promise about the body not decaying. The pit or the grave keeps closer to shachat's most literal Hebrew sense, a hope about not remaining in the place of the dead, which decay is naturally associated with but is not, strictly, the same claim."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05e9\u05b7\u05c1\u05d7\u05b7\u05ea shachat (pit; extended: corruption) \u00b7 H7845"}],"src":["Septuagint diaphthora, decay\/corruption, behind Acts 2:27, 31","shachat's literal sense as pit\/grave: standard Hebrew lexicons","Peter's argument in Acts 2:29-31 explicitly building on this verse"]}
Where it appears
- ezekiel 19:4
- ezekiel 19:8
- ezekiel 28:8
- isaiah 38:17
- isaiah 51:14
- job 9:31
- job 17:14
- job 33:18
- job 33:22
- job 33:24
- job 33:28
- job 33:30
- jonah 2:6
- proverbs 26:27
- psalms 7:15
- psalms 9:15
- psalms 16:10
- psalms 30:9
- psalms 35:7
- psalms 49:9
- psalms 55:23
- psalms 94:13
- psalms 103:4
