מְשׁוּגָה
me.shu.gah
error
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Analytical Synthesis: H4879 (משׁוגה) The Hebrew word *meshugah* appears only once in the biblical text, where it carries the meaning "error." Based on its single occurrence, this lemma functioned as a noun denoting a mistake or deviation from correctness. The rarity of this particular form in the biblical corpus limits what can be determined about its full semantic range or nuanced applications, but its basic sense aligns with the concept of something gone wrong or astray. The word's isolated appearance in scripture suggests it may have been either a less common synonym for error among the Hebrew vocabulary, or one restricted to specific literary or historical contexts. Without multiple occurrences to demonstrate varied usage patterns, we cannot determine whether the term carried specialized theological connotations or was used in particular genres of biblical writing. Its singularity in the biblical record makes it a relatively marginal term compared to more frequently employed synonyms for error or mistake. For readers seeking to understand biblical vocabulary comprehensively, *meshugah* represents the kind of hapax legomenon (single-occurrence word) that challenges translation and interpretation, since a word's full meaning is typically illuminated through observing how it functions across different contexts. Here, that context is unavailable.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
1 total occurrence across the text