Hebrew word · H7807
שַׁח
veshach
lowly
Literally 'low/bowed of eyes.' The root shachach means 'to bow down, crouch, be bent low' (Ps 35:14, 'bowed down, mourning'; Ps 38:6; Isa 2:11, 17). The phrase describes a person whose gaze is lowered. That can mean modesty before God, but also shame, grief, or being crushed by circumstance.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament.
What it means
low, lowly
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
- Range of meaning
Literally 'low/bowed of eyes.' The root shachach means 'to bow down, crouch, be bent low' (Ps 35:14, 'bowed down, mourning'; Ps 38:6; Isa 2:11, 17). The phrase describes a person whose gaze is lowered. That can mean modesty before God, but also shame, grief, or being crushed by circumstance.
- Against the English
KJV/WEB: 'the humble person.' BSB/ESV: 'the lowly.' NIV: 'the downcast.' YLT keeps the image: 'the bowed down of eyes.' 'Humble' leans toward a virtue. 'Downcast' leans toward a condition. The Hebrew holds both.
- How it drifted
To a modern reader, 'humble person' mostly means a modest personality, someone who doesn't brag. The Hebrew image is physical and social: someone bowed down, eyes lowered. That person may be humbled by trouble as much as humble by character.
- Used elsewhere in the period
The phrase is the deliberate opposite of 'high eyes' (rum einayim), the standard idiom for arrogance: Ps 18:27 (2 Sam 22:28), 'You save (toshia') a humble people, but haughty eyes you bring low (tashpil)'; Ps 101:5; Prov 6:17; 30:13; Isa 2:11; 5:15. Ps 18:27 uses the same two verbs as Job 22:29: 'save' and 'bring low.'
Similar words
Where it appears
Job · 1
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Job 22:29 וְשַׁ֖ח and [the] lowly of
When men are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’ then He will save the lowly.
Here: 'And the one bowed down of…', a person sunk or stooped. The word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, but its root (shachach, 'to bow, crouch, sink') is common for people bent under grief or humiliation.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.