Hebrew word · H4180

מוֹרָשׁ

morashei

possession

A possession or holding, especially one taken over or inherited. It comes from yarash, "to take possession of, dispossess, inherit", the key verb for Israel taking the land (Deut 1:8 and often).

Appears 3 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. · Updated October 31, 2026

What it means

possession

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 Isaiah 14:23

Range of meaning: A possession or holding, especially one taken over or inherited. It comes from yarash, "to take possession of, dispossess, inherit", the key verb for Israel taking the land (Deut 1:8 and often).
Against the English: "Possession" (KJV, WEB, ESV) keeps the word but loses its tone of inheritance and conquest. "A place for" (BSB, NIV) is smoother and drops the irony altogether.
Used elsewhere in the period: Used of land held as an inheritance in Exod 6:8 (morashah), Deut 33:4, and Ezek 11:15 and 25:4, 10. In Ezek 25:4, 10 God gives conquered peoples to "the people of the East" lemorashah, the same kind of judgment-by-handover found here.

From the study of Obadiah 1:17

Range of meaning: A rare noun: possession, holding, property held by right, closely tied to the inheritance of land. Its sibling môrāšāh is used of the land promised to the patriarchs (Exod 6:8; Ezek 11:15; 33:24) and of the law as Jacob's 'inheritance' (Deut 33:4).
Against the English: KJV 'possessions' (plural, matching the Hebrew) is formally exact. To a modern ear, though, it suggests personal belongings, goods and wealth. ESV adds 'their own possessions', which brings out that these were theirs to begin with. NIV and NLT 'inheritance' catches the hereditary sense. NRSV, following the Greek, has 'those who dispossessed them'.
How it drifted: Modern 'possessions' means movable property, the things a person owns. The Hebrew word belongs to the world of family land held across generations, which could not rightly be sold off for good (compare Lev 25; Naboth in 1 Kgs 21).
Used elsewhere in the period: Isaiah 14:23 (Babylon made 'a possession for the hedgehog'); Job 17:11 ('the possessions of my heart', figurative). The pairing of verb and noun from one root (yāraš … môrāš) is a deliberate echo, like 'they will hold their holdings'.

Similar words

מוֹרָשָׁה morashah · possession

Where it appears

Job · 1

Job 17:11 מ֖וֹרָשֵׁ֣י [the] wishes of

My days have passed; my plans are broken off—even the desires of my heart.

Isaiah · 1

Isaiah 14:23 לְמוֹרַ֥שׁ <into> a possession of

“I will make her a place for owls and for swamplands; I will sweep her away with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of Hosts.

Here: "Into a possession of." The word comes from yarash, the verb for taking over land and inheriting it. That makes it ironic: the empire that took other nations' land will now be "inherited" by wild animals.

Obadiah · 1

Obadiah 1:17 מוֹרָֽשֵׁיהֶם׃ possessions their

But on Mount Zion there will be deliverance, and it will be holy, and the house of Jacob will reclaim their possession.

Here: From the same root as the verb: 'they will possess their possessions', a deliberate echo. The word means the holdings that belong to them by inheritance, chiefly land. The Greek and Latin versions read it instead as 'those who dispossessed them' (see textual notes).

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