Hebrew word · H7917
שְׂכִירָה
hasekhirah
hired
'Hired, wage-bought'. The feminine adjective appears only here. Its root śākar means 'to hire, pay wages', and gives śākîr, 'hired worker, day-labourer' (Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14), and śākār, 'wages'.
Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament.
What it means
(fem) 1) hired
1a) hired (of animal)
1b) hireling, hired labourer (subst)
1b1) mercenary
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
'Hired, wage-bought'. The feminine adjective appears only here. Its root śākar means 'to hire, pay wages', and gives śākîr, 'hired worker, day-labourer' (Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14), and śākār, 'wages'. In other contexts the root also covers hiring mercenaries (2 Sam 10:6; 2 Chr 25:6) and hiring a prophet to curse (Deut 23:4).
- Against the English
English 'hired' is accurate. What English loses is the link a Hebrew hearer would catch between the razor and Ahaz's own payment. Some readers take 'hired' to mean only 'foreign' or 'mercenary' in general.
- Used elsewhere in the period
2 Kings 16:7–8 records Ahaz sending silver and gold from the temple and palace to Tiglath-pileser III with the message 'I am your servant and your son; come up and save me.' The Assyrian king's own inscriptions list 'Jehoahaz [i.e. Ahaz] of Judah' among kings who paid him tribute. The Septuagint apparently read the same consonants as 'drunken' (šikkōrāh), which shows translators found the word unusual.
Similar words
Where it appears
Isaiah · 1
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Isaiah 7:20 הַשְּׂכִירָ֜ה <the> hired
On that day the Lord will use a razor hired from beyond the Euphrates—the king of Assyria—to shave your head and the hair of your legs, and to remove your beard as well.
Here: 'Hired, paid for'. The word occurs only here, but it comes from the same root as śākîr, 'hired labourer'. It points sharply at Ahaz, who paid Assyria with temple silver and gold to rescue him (2 Kgs 16:7–8). The razor he hired will be turned on his own people.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.