Drink , by implication, drinking (the act); also (by implication) a banquet or (generally) feast
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The Hebrew noun mišĕteh can name drink, drinking, a banquet, or a feast. Its scenes range from household celebration to royal display, diplomatic hospitality, strategic action, communal remembrance, dangerous intoxication, and promised divine abundance.
Reader summary
Full entry for מִשְׁתֶּה (H4960) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun mišĕteh can name drink, drinking, a banquet, or a feast. Its scenes range from household celebration to royal display, diplomatic hospitality, strategic action, communal remembrance, dangerous intoxication, and promised divine abundance.
The BSB source-word alignment has 46 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include a feast (10), the banquet (6), of feasting (5), . . . (4), banquet (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 19:3. Its strongest book concentrations include Esther (20), Genesis (5), Daniel (4), Isaiah (3).
The Hebrew noun mišĕteh can name drink, drinking, a banquet, or a feast. Its scenes range from household celebration to royal display, diplomatic hospitality, strategic action, communal remembrance, dangerous intoxication, and promised divine abundance. Abraham celebrates Isaac's weaning with a great feast. Nabal holds a king-like feast while drunk, and Abigail waits until morning to disclose a crisis, a detail that should sharpen care for people navigating an impaired or volatile household.
Ecclesiastes places the house of mourning above the house of feasting when wisdom requires honest attention to death. Esther prepares banquets while acting under imperial danger, and the later Purim feast joins joy to gifts for one another and for the poor within a book marked by threatened destruction and violent reversal. Isaiah pictures the Lord preparing a rich banquet for all peoples while swallowing death and wiping away tears.
The noun does not guarantee that a table is safe, that wealth equals blessing, that alcohol excuses harm, or that celebration should silence grief. Responsible teaching asks who hosts, who is welcomed or endangered, what power operates, what is remembered, and whether the feast expresses love, manipulation, rescue, excess, or hope.
Mišĕteh names drink and the social event built around it. Scripture's feasts can celebrate life, display power, conceal danger, create strategic space, remember deliverance, include poor neighbors, or anticipate God's victory over death.
So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.
Abraham marks Isaac's weaning with a great feast, locating celebration in a child's growth and the family's long-awaited experience of God's promise.
When Abigail returned to Nabal, there he was in the house, holding a feast fit for a king, in high spirits and very drunk. So she told him nothing until morning light.
Nabal's king-like feast and severe intoxication lead Abigail to delay dangerous news until morning, highlighting impairment, power, and household vulnerability.
It is better to enter a house of mourning than a house of feasting, since death is the end of every man, and the living should take this to heart.
Wisdom prefers entering a house of mourning when mortality must be faced, refusing celebration as a way to avoid grief or honest reflection.
“If it pleases the king,” Esther replied, “may the king and Haman come today to the banquet I have prepared for the king.”
Esther uses a prepared banquet within a careful appeal to imperial power after approaching the king at risk to her life.
As the days on which the Jews gained rest from their enemies and the month in which their sorrow turned to joy and their mourning into a holiday. He wrote that these were to be days of feasting and joy, of sending gifts to one another and to the poor.
Purim remembrance turns sorrow toward joy through feasting, mutual gifts, and gifts to poor people, within the book's larger survival and violence narrative.
On this mountain the Lord of Hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all the peoples, a feast of aged wine, of choice meat, of finely aged wine.
The Lord prepares a lavish banquet for all peoples on the mountain where He swallows death, wipes tears, and reveals His saving faithfulness.
All the days of the oppressed are bad, but a cheerful heart has a continual feast.
A cheerful heart is compared with a continual feast, while the surrounding proverbs still acknowledge oppression, sorrow, little possessions, love, and turmoil.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Metonymic shift from the act of drinking to the social occasion, emphasizing festive communal gathering rather than mere consumption
Metonymic shift from the act of drinking to the social occasion, emphasizing festive communal gathering rather than mere consumption
drink, by implication, drinking (the act); also (by implication) a banquet or (generally) feast BDB: feast Usage: banquet, drank, drink, feast((-ed), -ing).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 46 lexical occurrence verses.
מִשְׁתֶּה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Mišĕteh reveals tables as morally significant spaces without making the table itself good or evil. Abraham's feast celebrates a child's growth after long waiting. Nabal's feast exposes excess and impaired power while Abigail exercises discernment in a dangerous household. Ecclesiastes refuses compulsory cheer and directs the living toward mortality and wisdom in a house of mourning.
Esther's banquets show a threatened woman acting with courage and careful timing inside an imperial system she does not control. Purim joins communal joy to gifts for neighbors and poor people, yet the book's violence and fear should remain visible. Isaiah's banquet is finally God's work: all peoples are invited where death is swallowed and tears are wiped away.
Proverbs can describe a cheerful heart as a continual feast while immediately valuing a little with love over abundance with hatred. Responsible teaching therefore welcomes celebration but tests its conditions. Who is safe, heard, fed, excluded, intoxicated, pressured, or unable to mourn? Biblical hope is not endless entertainment. It is hospitality shaped by truth, restraint, justice, generosity, protection, and the God who overcomes death.
Isa.25.6
Mišĕteh is a masculine Hebrew noun derived from drinking and can refer to drink itself, the act of drinking, a banquet, or a feast. Narrative setting decides whether the emphasis falls on hospitality, celebration, royal display, intoxication, danger, remembrance, or eschatological hope.
Jesus' meals, wedding-banquet parables, the Lord's Supper, and Revelation's marriage-supper imagery extend the canonical significance of tables and promised joy. They use Greek vocabulary and distinct covenant settings. Isaiah's all-peoples banquet provides an important hope-filled backdrop, but no single Hebrew feast automatically establishes a sacramental or end-times equation.