Hebrew word · H4189
מֹשֶׁכֶת
moshekhot
cord
Occurs only here. It comes from מָשַׁךְ, 'to draw, drag, pull' (as when Joseph is drawn up from the pit, Genesis 37:28, or when God says 'I drew you with cords', Hosea 11:4). So it means 'drawing-cords', ropes or bonds.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
cord
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
- Range of meaning
Occurs only here. It comes from מָשַׁךְ, 'to draw, drag, pull' (as when Joseph is drawn up from the pit, Genesis 37:28, or when God says 'I drew you with cords', Hosea 11:4). So it means 'drawing-cords', ropes or bonds.
- Against the English
KJV and ESV have 'bands' or 'cords', WEB has 'cords', BSB and NIV have 'belt', and YLT has 'attractions'.
- How it drifted
'Belt' borrows the familiar modern name for the three bright stars across Orion's middle. That may be what the poet pictured, but the Hebrew word means ropes for pulling or holding, not a garment's belt.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The Septuagint has φραγμόν, 'fence, enclosure'. The Vulgate has gyrum, 'circuit', and names the star group as Arcturus here. These look like attempts to make sense of a rare word.
Where it appears
Job · 1
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Job 38:31 מֹשְׁכ֖וֹת [the] chains of
Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?
Here: The word comes from a verb meaning 'to draw' or 'drag', so it means ropes or cords that pull or hold something. This verse is its only occurrence in the Bible. Here it means the bonds that hold Orion in place. Many link them with the three stars of Orion's belt, but the word itself means cords, not a belt.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.