שִׂיחָה
si.chah
meditation
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# שִׂיחָה (Siḥah): Meditation in Biblical Hebrew The Hebrew word *siḥah* denotes meditation—a focused mental or spiritual activity rather than external action. With only three occurrences in the biblical text, this word represents a relatively specialized vocabulary item, suggesting that meditation held a defined but limited place in the biblical lexicon for expressing this particular concept. The rarity of *siḥah* indicates that when biblical writers needed to describe meditation specifically, they reached for this particular term, though other related words may have been used for similar mental activities. The precise contexts of these three uses would determine whether the word emphasizes quiet reflection, contemplative prayer, or thoughtful consideration, but such specifics cannot be determined from the lexical data alone. What is clear is that Hebrew possessed this distinct vocabulary choice for naming the activity of meditation.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
3 total occurrences across the text