יָשֵׁן
ya.shen
to sleep
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# The Hebrew Word for Sleep: יָשֵׁן (yashen) The Hebrew verb יָשֵׁן (yashen) carries the straightforward meaning "to sleep," appearing twenty times throughout the biblical text. This frequency suggests the concept held consistent importance in Hebrew discourse, though not as a dominant theme as some other verbs. The word serves as a basic descriptor of the physical state of sleep itself rather than exploring metaphorical or symbolic dimensions. With only the essential lexical data available, we can establish that yashen functioned as a standard vocabulary choice for expressing the act of sleeping. The twenty occurrences distributed across the biblical corpus indicate the word was neither rare nor central to theological vocabulary—it appears when biblical narratives or descriptions simply needed to convey that someone was asleep. This neutral, literal quality distinguishes it from words that might carry symbolic weight or theological significance in religious texts. The consistency of its definition across these occurrences suggests Hebrew speakers used this term reliably and unambiguously for this common human experience.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
20 total occurrences across the text
For now should I have lain down and been quiet. I should have slept, then I would have been at rest,
Psalms 3:5I laid myself down and slept. I awakened; for Yahweh sustains me.
Psalms 4:8In peace I will both lay myself down and sleep, for you, Yahweh alone, make me live in safety.
Psalms 13:3Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death;
Psalms 44:23Wake up! Why do you sleep, Lord? Arise! Don’t reject us forever.
Psalms 121:4Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
Proverbs 4:16For they don’t sleep unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall.
Ecclesiastes 5:12The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eats little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not allow him to sleep.
Isaiah 5:27No one shall be weary nor stumble among them; no one shall slumber nor sleep, neither shall the belt of their waist be untied, nor the strap of their sandals be broken,
Jeremiah 51:39When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh.
Jeremiah 51:57I will make her princes, her wise men, her governors, her deputies, and her mighty men drunk. They will sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Armies.
Ezekiel 34:25“ ‘I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause evil animals to cease out of the land. They will dwell securely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.
Genesis 2:21Yahweh God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. As the man slept, he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.
Genesis 41:5He slept and dreamed a second time; and behold, seven heads of grain came up on one stalk, healthy and good.
Leviticus 13:11it is a chronic leprosy in the skin of his body, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean. He shall not isolate him, for he is already unclean.
Leviticus 26:10You shall eat old supplies long kept, and you shall move out the old because of the new.
Deuteronomy 4:25When you shall father children and children’s children, and you shall have been long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a carved image in the form of anything, and shall do that which is evil in Yahweh your God’s sight to provoke him to anger,
Judges 16:14She fastened it with the pin, and said to him, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He awakened out of his sleep, and plucked away the pin of the beam and the fabric.
Judges 16:19She made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man and shaved off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him.
1 Kings 19:5He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, an angel touched him, and said to him, “Arise and eat!”