Hebrew word · H8109

שְׁמֻרָה

shemurot

waking

This word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning has to be worked out from its root and from related words. It is built on šāmar, "to guard, keep, watch".

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

eyelid

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 Psalm 77:4

Range of meaning

This word appears only here in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning has to be worked out from its root and from related words. It is built on šāmar, "to guard, keep, watch". There are two main proposals: (1) eyelids, the "guards" of the eye (BDB, HALOT); (2) watches, the night watches, since a closely related noun ʾašmurâ / ʾašmōret means a watch of the night.

Against the English

KJV's "holdest mine eyes waking" gets the sense across without choosing. WEB, NASB and ESV say "eyelids". BSB and NIV turn it into "kept my eyes from closing". YLT keeps "the watches of mine eyes". None is wrong, but each English version picks one side of a word that is genuinely uncertain.

Used elsewhere in the period

Related nouns: "I meditate on you in the watches of the night" (Ps 63:6); "My eyes anticipate the night watches" (Ps 119:148); "a thousand years ... like a watch in the night" (Ps 90:4). The Greek Septuagint (Ps 76:5) reads "my eyes anticipated the watches (phylakas)", taking the word as "watches" and apparently echoing Ps 119:148. Jerome's Latin translation from the Hebrew also uses "vigilias" (watches).

Where it appears

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 77:4 שְׁמֻר֣וֹת [the] eyelids of

    You have kept my eyes from closing; I am too troubled to speak.

    Here: This word occurs only here in the Bible. It comes from šāmar, "to guard, keep watch". Either it means the eyelids as the eye's "guards", so God is holding the lids open, or it means the "watches" of the night, so God keeps the speaker's eyes through every watch. On both readings the picture is forced sleeplessness.

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