Hebrew word · H5500

סָחָה

vesicheiti

to scrape

To scrape or sweep off. The verb appears only here in the Hebrew Bible.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

1) to scrape

1a) (Piel) to scrape clean, scour

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 Ezekiel 26:4

Range of meaning

To scrape or sweep off. The verb appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. Its meaning is fixed by a related noun, sechi, 'offscouring, scrapings, refuse' (Lam 3:45: 'you have made us offscouring and refuse'), and by related words in other Semitic languages meaning to scrape off earth or sweep clean (BDB, HALOT).

Against the English

English versions agree on 'scrape' (KJV, ESV, NASB, BSB, WEB), and that is accurate. What English cannot show is how unusual the word is, and that it comes from the vocabulary of scraping off filth.

Used elsewhere in the period

Lam 3:45 (sechi, 'offscouring'). Compare the idea, though not the verb, in Lev 14:41–45, where the plaster and 'dust' (ʿafar) of a house with an infestation is scraped off and dumped outside the city as unclean. The Septuagint here appears to use a verb for winnowing or scattering the dust, and the Vulgate has radam, 'I will scrape'.

Where it appears

Ezekiel · 1

  1. Ezekiel 26:4 וְסִֽחֵיתִ֥י and I will scrape away

    They will destroy the walls of Tyre and demolish her towers. I will scrape the soil from her and make her a bare rock.

    Here: A rare verb found only here in the Hebrew Bible: to scrape or sweep clean. The speaker changes from 'they' to 'I': the nations knock down the buildings, but God himself scrapes off what is left.

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