To Be Satisfied
To Be Satisfied [1]
Śâba‛ (שָׂבֵעַ, Strong'S #7646), “to be satisfied, sated, surfeited.” This word is found in Akkadian and Ugaritic, as well as in all periods of Hebrew. It occurs some 96 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. In its first occurrence in the Old Testament text, śâba‛ expresses the idea of “being filled, sated”: “… When the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full …” (Exod. 16:8). As here, the word is frequently used in parallelism with “to eat,” or “to graze” when used with cattle or sheep (Jer. 50:19). The earth too “can be sated, have its fill,” of rain (Job 38:27).
In a notoriously difficult verse (Hab. 2:5), wine seems to be referred to as never “being satisfied, never having enough.” Instead of “wine,” the Habakkuk Dead Sea Scroll reads “wealth,” which seems more appropriate in the context which points to Assyria as the concern of Habakkuk’s complaint.
Śâba‛ sometimes expresses “being surfeited with,” as in Prov. 25:16: “Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.” God too can “become surfeited,” especially when men offer sacrifices with the wrong motives: “… I am full of the burnt offerings of rams …” (Isa. 1:11). The wise man noted that the lazy man “that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough [be surfeited with poverty]” (Prov. 28:19; to translate “will have plenty of poverty,” as does the Rsv, is not quite strong enough).
Śâba‛ often expresses God’s “satisfying, supplying,” man with his material needs: “… Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps. 103:5). But even when God “fed them to the full,” Israel was not satisfied and went after strange gods (Jer. 5:7). Used in parallelism with “to enrich” in Ezek. 27:33, śâba‛ implies something of enriching as well: “… Thou filledst many people; … thou didst enrich the kings of the earth.…”
