Hebrew word · H3486

יָשֵׁשׁ

veyashesh

decrepit

Very old, aged, frail with age. It occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning comes from related words: yāšîš 'aged' (Job 12:12; 15:10; 29:8; 32:6). It sounds like an intensified 'old'.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament.

What it means

aged, decrepit, feeble

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 2 Chronicles 36:17

Range of meaning

Very old, aged, frail with age. It occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning comes from related words: yāšîš 'aged' (Job 12:12; 15:10; 29:8; 32:6). It sounds like an intensified 'old'.

Against the English

KJV 'him that stooped for age'; YLT 'very aged'; WEB, BSB 'infirm'. 'Infirm' suggests sickness, but the word is about the extreme weakness of great age.

Used elsewhere in the period

Its nearest relative is in Job. The Vulgate renders it decrepitus, and the Greek tradition of this verse appears to reword the clause entirely (see textual notes). Lists of the very young and the very old are standard in Hebrew descriptions of total war: Deut 32:25 has 'the nursing child with the gray-haired man'.

Similar words

Where it appears

2 Chronicles · 1

  1. 2 Chronicles 36:17 וְיָשֵׁ֑שׁ and [the] decrepit

    So He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who put their young men to the sword in the sanctuary, sparing neither young men nor young women, neither elderly nor infirm. God gave them all into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar,

    Here: 'And the very aged.' This word occurs only here in the Bible. A related word (yāšîš) means 'aged' in Job. It means the frailest old people, the ones least able to resist and most deserving of mercy. KJV's 'him that stooped for age' captures the picture.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.