Hebrew word · H2642
חֶסְרוֹן
vechesron
deficiency
'Lack, deficiency, shortfall, deficit'. The noun appears only here in the Bible. It comes from ḥāsēr, 'to lack, be short of, decrease' (Eccl 6:2 'he lacks nothing'; 9:8 'let oil not be lacking'; 10:3 'his heart/sense is lacking'). In later Hebrew it means 'loss, deficiency'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
the thing lacking, defect, deficiency
Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).
In depth
From the study of Ecclesiastes 1:15
- Range of meaning
'Lack, deficiency, shortfall, deficit'. The noun appears only here in the Bible. It comes from ḥāsēr, 'to lack, be short of, decrease' (Eccl 6:2 'he lacks nothing'; 9:8 'let oil not be lacking'; 10:3 'his heart/sense is lacking'). In later Hebrew it means 'loss, deficiency'.
- Against the English
'What is lacking' (BSB, WEB) is accurate. KJV's 'that which is wanting' was accurate in 1611, but today 'wanting' sounds like 'desired'. 'Deficit' best catches the bookkeeping tone.
- How it drifted
Only KJV's 'wanting' has drifted, from 'lacking' to 'desiring'.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Hapax in the Hebrew Bible. Ecclesiastes is full of commercial words: yitrôn 'profit, surplus' (1:3), ḥešbôn 'accounting, sum' (7:25, 27), ʿinyan 'business' (1:13). Commentators such as C.-L. Seow have noted that this matches the money-minded economy of Persian- and Hellenistic-period Judea. The Septuagint has hysterēma, 'shortfall, deficiency'.
Where it appears
Ecclesiastes · 1
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Ecclesiastes 1:15 וְחֶסְר֖וֹן and something missing
What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
Here: 'And a lack'. The word appears only here in the Bible and comes from the verb 'to lack, be short'. It sounds like an accountant's word, a shortfall in the books. It mirrors Qohelet's favorite word yitrôn, 'profit, surplus' (1:3).
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.