Hebrew word · H8347
שֵׁשַׁךְ
sheshakh
Babylon
Used only three times: Jer 25:26 (MT), Jer 51:41 and, by most readings, nowhere else. Almost every lexicon (BDB, HALOT) explains it as an atbash, an ancient letter-swap code in which the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet stands for the last, the second for the second-to-last, and so on.
Appears 2 times in 2 verses of the Hebrew Old Testament. ·
What it means
Sheshach = "thy fine linen"
another name for Babylon apparently taken from the goddess 'Shach'
Another name of ba.vel (בָּבֶ֫ל, בָּבֶל "Babylon" H0894)
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 Jeremiah 51:41
- Range of meaning
Used only three times: Jer 25:26 (MT), Jer 51:41 and, by most readings, nowhere else. Almost every lexicon (BDB, HALOT) explains it as an atbash, an ancient letter-swap code in which the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet stands for the last, the second for the second-to-last, and so on. ב (b, 2nd letter) ↔ שׁ (sh, 2nd from the end); ל (l, 12th) ↔ כ (k, 12th from the end). So בבל (BBL, Babel) becomes ששך (ShShK). Jeremiah 51:1 has a second cipher of the same kind: לֵב קָמָי ("the heart of those who rise against me") is the atbash of כשדים, "Chaldeans".
- Against the English
Most English versions keep "Sheshach/Sheshak" and explain it in a note. The ESV and NLT put "Babylon" in the text, which gives the meaning but loses the wordplay and the matching of coded and open names across the two halves of the verse.
- Used elsewhere in the period
Letter-swap ciphers are known from later Jewish tradition. The Talmud and medieval commentators such as Rashi explain Sheshach as atbash. The Aramaic Targum renders the word as "Babel" directly. The Greek Septuagint lacks Sheshach both here and in 25:26, and in 51:1 it reads "Chaldeans" for the coded phrase.
Similar words
Where it appears
Jeremiah · 2
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Jeremiah 25:26 שֵׁשַׁ֖ךְ Sheshach
all the kings of the north, both near and far, one after another—all the kingdoms on the face of the earth. And after all of them, the king of Sheshach will drink it too.
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Jeremiah 51:41 שֵׁשַׁ֔ךְ Sheshach
How Sheshach has been captured! The praise of all the earth has been seized. What a horror Babylon has become among the nations!
Here: A code-name for Babylon made by swapping each letter for its mirror letter in the alphabet. B (2nd letter) becomes Sh (2nd from the end), and L (12th) becomes K (12th from the end). So BBL becomes ShShK. The second half of the verse names Babylon openly, so the cipher here works as wordplay, not secrecy.
Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.