Hebrew word · H7907
שֶׂכְוִי
lasekhvi
heart
Found only here. Probably from the root śkh, 'to look, watch' (compare maśkît, 'image, showpiece'). Proposed senses: 'mind' (the faculty that sees or perceives), 'rooster' (the watcher for dawn), or a 'celestial appearance', such as a meteor or a planet.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
1) a celestial appearance or phenomenon, mind
1a) meaning uncertain
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
Found only here. Probably from the root śkh, 'to look, watch' (compare maśkît, 'image, showpiece'). Proposed senses: 'mind' (the faculty that sees or perceives), 'rooster' (the watcher for dawn), or a 'celestial appearance', such as a meteor or a planet.
- Against the English
KJV has 'heart', BSB and WEB 'mind', YLT 'covered part', NIV 'the rooster'.
- How it drifted
Not drift so much as a choice. 'Mind' and 'heart' are guesses guided by the parallel with tuḥot read as 'inner parts'.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 26a: Rabbi Levi says that in Arabia a rooster is called sekhvi. Berakhot 60b gives the morning blessing that quotes this verse: 'Blessed… who gave the sekhvi understanding to distinguish between day and night.' Jews still say it every day. The Vulgate also has 'the rooster' (gallo). Some modern scholars (e.g. M. Pope, Anchor Bible) link it to a Coptic name for the planet Mercury, paired with Thoth.
Where it appears
Job · 1
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Job 38:36 לַשֶּׂ֣כְוִי to the heart
Who has put wisdom in the heart or given understanding to the mind?
Here: 'To the sekhvi.' The word is found only here in the Bible. Ancient Jewish tradition took it as 'the rooster'. Others take it as 'mind', or as some sign in the sky. It probably comes from a root meaning 'to look, watch'.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.