Hebrew word · H6234

עׇשְׁקָה

'ashekah-

oppression

The root means to oppress by force or fraud: extortion, cheating, holding back wages (Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14), crushing the poor (Prov 14:31), the strong squeezing the weak. The noun ʿāšqāh occurs only here.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

oppression, abuse, distress

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 38:14

Range of meaning

The root means to oppress by force or fraud: extortion, cheating, holding back wages (Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14), crushing the poor (Prov 14:31), the strong squeezing the weak. The noun ʿāšqāh occurs only here.

Against the English

BSB/KJV/ESV/NASB/WEB 'I am oppressed'. NIV 'I am being threatened'. NLT 'I am in trouble'. 'Oppressed' is accurate, but readers now tend to hear it as an emotional or political state rather than a debtor being squeezed.

How it drifted

Modern 'oppressed' often names a feeling ('I feel oppressed') or a large-scale political injustice. The Hebrew word has a concrete legal and economic flavour: someone with a claim over you is taking what you have. NIV's and NLT's softer renderings lose that.

Used elsewhere in the period

Psalm 119:122 pairs exactly these two roots: 'Be surety (ʿărōb) for your servant for good; let not the arrogant oppress me (yaʿašqunî).' Leviticus 5:21/6:2 and Leviticus 19:13 use the root for defrauding a neighbour.

Where it appears

Isaiah · 1

  1. Isaiah 38:14 עָֽשְׁקָה־ oppression

    I chirp like a swallow or crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak as I look upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my security.”

    Here: This noun occurs only here in the Bible. Its root ʿāšaq is the word for extortion, withholding a worker's wages and crushing the weak. The picture is of being squeezed by someone who holds power over you, like a debtor pressed by a creditor.

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