Hebrew word · H4190

מוֹשָׁעָה

lemosha'ot

salvation

A noun from the root y-sh-ʿ ('to save, rescue, give victory'). The root covers rescue from enemies, sickness, oppression or danger, often through military victory. It has the sense of room being opened for someone who was hemmed in. Because this form is plural, it means concrete acts of deliverance.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

saving act, deliverance

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 Psalm 68:20

Range of meaning

A noun from the root y-sh-ʿ ('to save, rescue, give victory'). The root covers rescue from enemies, sickness, oppression or danger, often through military victory. It has the sense of room being opened for someone who was hemmed in. Because this form is plural, it means concrete acts of deliverance.

Against the English

KJV and ESV have 'salvation'. BSB and WEB have 'deliverance', and NASB has 'deliverances', which keeps the plural. 'Salvation' is not wrong, but a modern reader tends to hear one spiritual event, rescue from sin and hell. The Hebrew plural pictures a God who rescues his people over and over.

How it drifted

In Christian usage 'salvation' came to mean mainly eternal redemption of the soul. In the Psalms the root nearly always means rescue in this life: from battle, plague or persecution.

Used elsewhere in the period

The word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. Its relatives yeshuʿah (v. 19, 'the God of our salvation') and teshuʿah (victory in battle, e.g. Ps 33:17) are common. The Greek Septuagint renders it with an infinitive phrase, 'a God of saving' (theos tou sōzein). The Latin Vulgate has 'Deus salvos faciendi', 'a God of making safe'.

Where it appears

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 68:20 לְֽמוֹשָׁ֫ע֥וֹת of saving acts

    Our God is a God of deliverance; the Lord GOD is our rescuer from death.

    Here: Plural: many separate acts of rescue, not one abstract 'salvation'. The word appears nowhere else in the Bible. The little prefix 'le-' means 'for' or 'given to': a God whose business is rescues.

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