To place (in a very wide application)
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Setting something establishes it in a place, role, or relation. The Hebrew verb represented by H7896 can describe a concrete arrangement, an appointment to responsibility, or the placing of something before another.
Reader summary
Full entry for שִׁית (H7896) · Open the biblical lexicon
Setting something establishes it in a place, role, or relation. The Hebrew verb represented by H7896 can describe a concrete arrangement, an appointment to responsibility, or the placing of something before another.
The BSB source-word alignment has 83 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include set (4), . . . (3), He made (2), I will bring (2), take (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 3:15. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (30), Exodus (8), Genesis (8), Job (8).
Setting something establishes it in a place, role, or relation. The Hebrew verb represented by H7896 can describe a concrete arrangement, an appointment to responsibility, or the placing of something before another. Its breadth makes the object and the surrounding sentence especially important. Setting a person over Egypt is not the same action as setting sins in the light of God's presence. Both involve a placement, but the narrative or prayer explains what that placement accomplishes. The verb offers no single spiritual program that can be carried unchanged into every passage.
Joseph's counsel in Genesis 41:33 includes appointing a discerning person to oversee preparations for famine. The setting there concerns practical responsibility. Psalm 90:8 places hidden wrongdoing before God and makes its exposure part of a prayer about human frailty and divine judgment. Psalm 141:3 asks God to station a guard over the speaker's mouth. That image joins dependence on God to the need for restrained speech; it does not portray the worshiper as helplessly exempt from responsibility for words. These settings differ because the subjects, objects, and purposes differ.
God's announcement of enmity in Genesis 3:15 and the promised subjection of enemies in Psalm 110:1 carry greater canonical weight. Their weight arises from what God declares and from how later Scripture takes up those passages, not from an unusually powerful meaning of the ordinary verb. Christian readers can therefore confess Christ's victorious reign where the New Testament identifies it while resisting the temptation to make every instance of setting into a prophecy. A careful word study clarifies what is being established and by whom, then allows the particular passage to govern belief, prayer, and obedience.
Appointments, exposed sins, guarded speech, declared enmity, and promised royal victory illustrate different uses of setting. Each passage defines the relation being established and prevents the verb's broad range from becoming one universal theological meaning.
Now, therefore, Pharaoh should look for a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt.
Joseph advises Pharaoh to place a discerning and wise man over Egypt. Appointment serves a concrete plan for famine preparation rather than conferring unlimited spiritual authority.
You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.
The prayer describes sins exposed before God, including what people conceal. Its language of placement belongs to confession within the psalm's account of mortality and mercy.
Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch at the door of my lips.
The speaker asks the Lord to set a guard over his mouth. The surrounding prayer connects protected speech with resistance to evil and readiness to receive righteous correction.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
God declares that He will establish enmity involving the serpent and the woman and their offspring. The declaration, participants, and following conflict supply the theological content.
The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
The Lord promises to make the enthroned lord's enemies a footstool. The royal setting and later scriptural use explain this promise, rather than the setting verb alone.
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. to place (in a very wide application)
to place (in a very wide application) BDB: put Usage: apply, appoint, array, bring, consider, lay (up), let alone, × look, make, mark, put (on), regard, set, shew, be stayed, × take.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
שִׁית is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The request to set a guard over the mouth assumes that speech matters before it leaves the speaker. Psalm 141:3 does not merely ask for relief from the consequences of damaging words. It asks the Lord to protect the place where those words emerge. The next verse turns to the heart's attraction to evil, and the following verse welcomes righteous correction. Guarded speech therefore belongs to a wider posture of dependence and teachability.
A teacher can help listeners examine what they are preparing to say and why they want to say it. Prayer is not a technique for controlling another person's voice, and it does not sanctify imposed silence about wrongdoing. The psalmist asks for a guard over his own mouth. This direction matters: faithful restraint begins with submitting one's own speech to God while remaining willing to hear correction. The image is practical precisely because it is personal, directed, and joined to a changed heart.
Ps.141.3
H7896 takes its particular force from what is set and the relation specified: a person over a land, sins before God, or a guard over a mouth. These are contextual uses of a broad placement verb, not separate spiritual powers contained in its root.
Psalm 110:1 is directly taken up in Matthew 22:41-46 and Hebrews 10:12-14. Those passages identify its relevance to Christ's lordship and finished sacrifice. Other uses of H7896, such as an administrative appointment, should retain their own setting rather than inherit that royal fulfillment automatically.