כָּשֵׁר
ka.sher
to succeed
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# כָּשֵׁר (kasher): To Succeed The Hebrew verb כָּשֵׁר (kasher) carries the fundamental meaning of "to succeed," though its extremely limited presence in the biblical text restricts what can be definitively stated about its range of usage. With only three occurrences across the entire Bible, this word represents a relatively rare lexical item, suggesting either specialized use or limited applicability within biblical Hebrew's vocabulary for describing successful outcomes. The scarcity of this term raises interesting questions about biblical semantics. Hebrew likely employed multiple verbs to express the concept of success or prosperity, with other more common terms potentially serving as the primary vocabulary in this semantic field. The three occurrences of kasher would represent a specific or particular way of expressing success that authors drew upon only occasionally. Without access to the specific contexts of these three uses, the exact nuance that distinguished kasher from other success-related terminology remains unclear, though the lexicon's straightforward definition ("to succeed") indicates the core meaning is unambiguous. The word's rarity in the biblical corpus may also reflect its historical or regional limitations within Hebrew usage, or it may represent vocabulary that was more prevalent in earlier stages of the language but later gave way to other expressions. For readers of the Bible, kasher's restricted occurrences mean encountering this particular term would have been a notable experience rather than a common
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
3 total occurrences across the text
She said, “If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right to the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces.
Ecclesiastes 10:10If the ax is blunt, and one doesn’t sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but skill brings success.
Ecclesiastes 11:6In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening don’t withhold your hand; for you don’t know which will prosper, whether this or that, or whether they both will be equally good.