A fracture , figuratively, ruin ; specifically, a solution (of a dream)
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The Hebrew noun sheber can name a physical fracture, a breach, a crushing injury, or large-scale ruin. Leviticus mentions a broken foot or hand within ancient priestly qualifications; Proverbs describes destructive pride and speech that crushes the spirit; Jeremiah protests leaders who treat the people's wound lightly and gives voice to grievous communal injury; Lamentations compares Jerusalem's wound with the sea.
Reader summary
Full entry for שֶׁבֶר (H7667) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun sheber can name a physical fracture, a breach, a crushing injury, or large-scale ruin. Leviticus mentions a broken foot or hand within ancient priestly qualifications; Proverbs describes destructive pride and speech that crushes the spirit; Jeremiah protests leaders who treat the people's wound lightly and gives voice to grievous communal.
The BSB source-word alignment has 45 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include destruction (7), and destruction (3), Disaster (2), fracture (2), the brokenness (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Leviticus 21:19. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (15), Isaiah (9), Lamentations (5), Leviticus (5).
The Hebrew noun sheber can name a physical fracture, a breach, a crushing injury, or large-scale ruin. Leviticus mentions a broken foot or hand within ancient priestly qualifications; Proverbs describes destructive pride and speech that crushes the spirit; Jeremiah protests leaders who treat the people's wound lightly and gives voice to grievous communal injury; Lamentations compares Jerusalem's wound with the sea; Amos condemns elites who do not grieve Joseph's ruin; and Isaiah holds out God's binding and healing of His people's brokenness.
The noun describes damage without making bodily difference a moral verdict. Responsible teaching names what or who has been broken, the agents and conditions involved, the scale of loss, and whether the passage laments, warns, indicts denial, or promises repair. It must not stigmatize disabled people, minimize trauma with premature peace, romanticize collapse, assign inherited ethnic guilt, or make poetic healing a guarantee that removes the need for medical, legal, material, and communal care.
Sheber moves from literal fracture to damaged speech, social breach, military or civic ruin, communal trauma, and hoped-for healing. The texts demand truthful naming of damage and resist both prideful causation and superficial treatment.
No man who has a broken foot or hand,
The priestly holiness legislation lists a broken foot or hand among bodily conditions limiting altar service.
A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
Wisdom contrasts life-giving speech with a perverse tongue whose effect is to crush the spirit.
Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
The proverb places pride and a haughty spirit on the path toward destruction and downfall.
They dress the wound of My people with very little care, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all.
Religious and civic leaders treat the people's wound superficially by announcing peace where none exists.
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am crushed. I mourn; horror has gripped me.
Jeremiah identifies himself with the people's brokenness, mourning and experiencing horror rather than detachment.
Woe to me because of my brokenness; my wound is grievous! But I said, “This is truly my sickness, and I must bear it.”
The speaker names a grievous wound and sickness honestly while facing suffering that must be borne.
What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?
The lament compares Daughter Zion's immense wound with the sea and asks who can bring healing.
You drink wine by the bowlful and anoint yourselves with the finest oils, but you fail to grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
Comfortable elites indulge themselves without grieving the ruin overtaking Joseph and the wider community.
The light of the moon will be as bright as the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the Lord binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds He has inflicted.
Isaiah's restoration vision depicts the Lord binding His people's brokenness and healing their wounds.
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. Physical breaking that extends metaphorically to social/spiritual ruin; also means dream interpretation through "unlocking" meaning.
Physical breaking that extends metaphorically to social/spiritual ruin; also means dream interpretation through "unlocking" meaning.
a fracture, figuratively, ruin; specifically, a solution (of a dream) BDB: breaking Usage: affliction, breach, breaking, broken(-footed, -handed), bruise, crashing, destruction, hurt, interpretation, vexation.
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 3 selected witnesses from 44 lexical occurrence verses.
שֶׁבֶר 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.
Sheber makes breakage visible at bodily, relational, and communal scale. Leviticus 21 records a cultic service restriction within Israel's priestly holiness system; it does not declare a person with a fracture morally guilty, spiritually inferior, or excluded from God's people. Proverbs can use breakage for the effect of corrupt speech and for the collapse that follows pride, connecting words and posture to real harm.
Jeremiah repeatedly refuses superficial treatment. Announcing peace without attending to the wound is itself part of failed leadership, while the prophet's mourning demonstrates solidarity rather than detached analysis. Lamentations preserves Daughter Zion's devastation in poetry vast enough to resist easy comparison or consolation; the city language must not become hostility toward Jewish people.
Amos indicts those whose comfort has made them indifferent to communal ruin. Isaiah's healing vision gives hope, but the same prophetic corpus insists on truth, repentance, justice, and God's action rather than denial. Faithful application names injury accurately, listens to affected people, provides appropriate medical and trauma care, investigates wrongdoing, makes material repair where possible, and lets hope accompany rather than erase lament.
Jer.6.14
Sheber is a Hebrew noun built from the breaking word family. Its concrete fracture sense extends metaphorically to breach, crushing, injury, and ruin; a specialized dream-interpretation sense appears elsewhere, so the immediate collocation and genre must select the meaning.
Jesus refuses indifference to wounded people, challenges status built on others' burdens, and bears suffering without calling evil good. The apostles describe the church as a body whose weaker members deserve honor and call speech, discipline, relief, and restoration to build up rather than crush.