Hebrew word · H7182

קֶ֫שֶׁב

kashev

attentiveness

Attentiveness, heeding, listening closely. The related verb hiqshiv means 'pay attention, incline the ear' (Ps 5:2; Prov 4:1). The noun itself is rare: here, 2 Kgs 4:31 and Isa 21:7.

Appears 4 times in 3 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

attentiveness, attention

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 1 Kings 18:29

Range of meaning

Attentiveness, heeding, listening closely. The related verb hiqshiv means 'pay attention, incline the ear' (Ps 5:2; Prov 4:1). The noun itself is rare: here, 2 Kgs 4:31 and Isa 21:7.

Against the English

BSB, NIV and WEB say 'paid attention', KJV 'regarded', YLT 'attending'. 'Regarded' is old-fashioned and may now suggest 'held in esteem', but in KJV English it meant 'took notice'.

Used elsewhere in the period

In 2 Kgs 4:31 Gehazi lays Elisha's staff on the dead Shunammite boy, and 'there was no voice and no qeshev', meaning the child showed no sign of life. The two Elijah/Elisha stories use the same pair of words.

Where it appears

1 Kings · 1

  1. 1 Kings 18:29 קָֽשֶׁב׃ [was] attention

    Midday passed, and they kept on raving until the time of the evening sacrifice. But there was no response; no one answered, no one paid attention.

    Here: An uncommon word for paying attention, as when someone pricks up their ears. Not only did no answer come; nobody was even listening. The same pairing 'no voice, no attention' describes a dead child in 2 Kings 4:31, and the picture here is close to that.

2 Kings · 1

  1. 2 Kings 4:31 קָ֑שֶׁב [was] attention

    Gehazi went on ahead of them and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So he went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”

Isaiah · 2

  1. Isaiah 21:7 קֶ֖שֶׁב קָֽשֶׁב׃ attentiveness

    When he sees chariots with teams of horsemen, riders on donkeys, riders on camels, he must be alert, fully alert.”

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