Hebrew word · H5602

סֵ֫פֶל

hasefel

bowl

A bowl or basin, apparently fairly wide, used for serving liquids or milk products.

Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

bowl, basin

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 Judges 6:38

Range of meaning

A bowl or basin, apparently fairly wide, used for serving liquids or milk products.

Against the English

'Bowl' is accurate. The actual size cannot be fixed, so 'a bowlful' should not be pressed to mean a precise or huge volume.

Used elsewhere in the period

It occurs only twice: here and in Judges 5:25, 'in a lordly bowl (sefel addirim) she brought him curds'. The Septuagint renders it lekanē, a basin.

Where it appears

Judges · 2

  1. Judges 5:25 בְּסֵ֥פֶל in a bowl of

    He asked for water, and she gave him milk. In a magnificent bowl she brought him curds.

  2. Judges 6:38 הַסֵּ֖פֶל the bowl

    And that is what happened. When Gideon arose the next morning, he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water.

    Here: A bowl or basin. The word appears only here and in Judges 5:25, where Jael serves Sisera curds 'in a lordly bowl'. The definite article ('the bowl') suggests an ordinary household bowl that Gideon had at hand.

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