A libation ; also a cast idol
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The Hebrew noun nesekĕ commonly names a drink offering poured in worship, but several prophetic passages use the same lexical family for a cast or molten image. Genesis records Jacob pouring a drink offering at the place where God spoke to him.
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Full entry for נֶסֶךְ (H5262) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun nesekĕ commonly names a drink offering poured in worship, but several prophetic passages use the same lexical family for a cast or molten image. Genesis records Jacob pouring a drink offering at the place where God spoke to him.
The BSB source-word alignment has 64 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include and drink offering (12), and drink offerings (9), drink offerings (9), . . . (8), a drink offering (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 35:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Numbers (34), Jeremiah (10), Exodus (3), Isaiah (3).
The Hebrew noun nesekĕ commonly names a drink offering poured in worship, but several prophetic passages use the same lexical family for a cast or molten image. Genesis records Jacob pouring a drink offering at the place where God spoke to him. The Torah then assigns measured drink offerings to Israel's sanctuary service and appointed sacrifices. Other passages expose libations poured to rival gods, and Isaiah uses the noun for a molten god claimed as a source of guidance.
Joel grieves when grain and drink offerings disappear from the house of the Lord, so absence can signal communal devastation rather than personal stinginess. The noun does not make pouring spiritually effective by itself, require modern Christians to reproduce Israel's offerings, or make every crafted image an idol. Responsible teaching identifies the concrete sense, recipient, covenant setting, speaker, and result.
It also refuses to exploit worshipers financially, pressure people to use alcohol, scapegoat women for communal idolatry, or promise that a liquid act can purchase blessing, healing, protection, or forgiveness.
Nesekĕ moves between drink offerings directed to the Lord, libations directed to other gods, the prophetic language of cast images, and the loss of temple offerings during disaster. Recipient and setting determine whether the act is faithful, forbidden, empty, or absent.
So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where God had spoken with him—a stone marker—and he poured out a drink offering on it and anointed it with oil.
Jacob marks the place of divine speech with a pillar, drink offering, and oil within his return to Bethel.
With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with a quarter hin of oil from pressed olives, and a drink offering of a quarter hin of wine.
The daily offering includes a measured portion of wine alongside the lamb, flour, and oil under explicit covenant instruction.
The drink offering accompanying each lamb shall be a quarter hin. Pour out the offering of fermented drink to the Lord in the sanctuary area.
The recipient, quantity, accompanying sacrifice, and sanctuary location are specified rather than left to private ritual invention.
Sorrows will multiply to those who chase other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood, or speak their names with my lips.
The psalmist refuses participation in rival worship and links those libations with multiplied sorrow rather than covenant refuge.
Therefore I declared it to you long ago; I announced it before it came to pass, so that you could not claim, ‘My idol has done this; my carved image and molten god has ordained it.’
The prophetic use concerns a manufactured deity falsely credited with directing events that the Lord had announced beforehand.
Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster.
The speakers defend collective idolatry by appealing to former prosperity, implicating households, ancestors, kings, and officials rather than women alone.
Grain and drink offerings have been cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord.
Crop devastation interrupts temple offerings and brings priests to mourning, making the missing libation a sign of communal loss.
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. Dual semantic split: libation (poured offering to God) versus molten idol (cast abomination)—antithetical religious practices
Dual semantic split: libation (poured offering to God) versus molten idol (cast abomination)—antithetical religious practices
a libation; also a cast idol BDB: drink-offering Usage: cover, drink offering, molten image.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
נֶסֶךְ 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.
Nesekĕ teaches that a visible act receives its meaning from allegiance and divine instruction, not from the liquid or object alone. Jacob's drink offering responds to the God who spoke and kept His promise. Exodus and Numbers place wine within measured sanctuary service joined to prescribed sacrifices, so those texts cannot be detached into a private technique or fundraising promise.
Psalm 16 rejects libations associated with chasing other gods. Jeremiah 44 exposes a community defending rival worship because earlier prosperity seemed to validate it, yet the passage names fathers, kings, officials, and households and should not be reduced to blame against women. Isaiah uses the noun's cast-image sense to deny that a manufactured god ordained events the Lord had announced.
Joel shows another angle: devastated crops cut off ordinary offerings and leave ministers mourning. Christian teaching may connect poured-offering language with faithful self-giving, but it must not recreate Israel's cult, pressure people in recovery to handle alcohol, monetize devotion, or declare every artistic object idolatrous. The central question is whom people trust and obey, not whether a liquid was poured.
Gen.35.14
Nesekĕ is a masculine Hebrew noun related to pouring or casting. Context distinguishes its common drink-offering sense from prophetic uses for a molten or cast image; one English gloss should not be forced across every occurrence.
Paul describes his life as being poured out like a drink offering in Philippians 2 and Second Timothy 4. Those metaphors express costly service and impending death; they do not transfer Israel's sanctuary measurements or make literal pouring a Christian requirement.