A tooth (as sharp ); specifically ivory ; figuratively, a cliff
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The Hebrew noun shen ordinarily means a tooth, and by material extension it can mean ivory or, in some settings, a sharp projection. Torah uses tooth language in injury law, including proportional legal formulas and compensation when an enslaved person loses a tooth.
Reader summary
Full entry for שֵׁן (H8127) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Hebrew noun shen ordinarily means a tooth, and by material extension it can mean ivory or, in some settings, a sharp projection. Torah uses tooth language in injury law, including proportional legal formulas and compensation when an enslaved person loses a tooth.
The BSB source-word alignment has 55 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include their teeth (6), tooth (6), . . . (4), of ivory (4), and the teeth (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 49:12. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (8), Job (7), Exodus (5), 1 Samuel (4).
The Hebrew noun shen ordinarily means a tooth, and by material extension it can mean ivory or, in some settings, a sharp projection. Torah uses tooth language in injury law, including proportional legal formulas and compensation when an enslaved person loses a tooth. Poetry speaks of teeth literally or figuratively to portray appetite, hostility, beauty, discomfort, or divine rescue.
Royal narratives use the material sense for ivory objects. These uses share a noun but do not authorize one symbolic meaning. A tooth may represent actual bodily injury, an animal's dangerous capacity, an aggressor's power, or visual beauty according to the passage. The legal phrase tooth for tooth restrains vengeance within public justice; it is not permission for private retaliation or physical reenactment.
The release required when an enslaved person is injured acknowledges harm within an unjust social world and cannot be used to excuse slavery. Responsible teaching protects bodily dignity, avoids graphic detail, supports dental care, and refuses beauty shame, racialized ivory imagery, violent prayer, or claims that dental illness reveals spiritual failure.
Shen names teeth, ivory, and related sharp forms across injury law, poetry, description, and royal material culture. Body, material, and metaphor must remain distinct.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Israel's injury law includes tooth for tooth within a public formula of proportionate accountability.
And if he knocks out the tooth of his manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free as compensation for the tooth.
An enslaved person whose tooth is knocked out must be released in compensation for the injury.
You must show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, and foot for foot.
The proportional formula concludes instructions concerning malicious testimony and careful judicial inquiry.
Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the slacker to those who send him.
Proverbs compares a lazy messenger to vinegar on the teeth and smoke in the eyes.
Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.
The psalmist asks the Lord to strike hostile power and break the teeth of the wicked.
O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O Lord, tear out the fangs of the lions.
The lament asks God to break the enemies' teeth and tear out the lions' fangs.
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. Sharpness as the dominant property: tooth → ivory's whiteness/hardness → cliff's jagged edge.
Sharpness as the dominant property: tooth → ivory's whiteness/hardness → cliff's jagged edge.
a tooth (as sharp); specifically ivory; figuratively, a cliff BDB: tooth Usage: crag, × forefront, ivory, × sharp, tooth.
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 55 lexical occurrence verses.
שֵׁן is built from these roots:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Shen brings interpretation close to embodied vulnerability. Exodus and Deuteronomy place tooth injury within public legal reasoning, where the formula limits response to proportion rather than unleashing personal vengeance. Exodus 21 also requires freedom when an enslaved person loses a tooth through a master's violence. The law recognizes concrete harm, but its presence in an ancient slaveholding setting is not moral permission to own people.
Wisdom uses tooth discomfort to describe the frustration caused by an unreliable messenger. Psalms use broken teeth as forceful poetic appeals for God to end hostile power. Such prayers can give oppressed people truthful language for danger and desire for justice, yet they are not commands to injure opponents. Elsewhere teeth and ivory may appear in beauty or wealth imagery, which should not become modern appearance standards or racialized symbolism.
Faithful teaching names genre and power. It supports protection, medical and dental care, proportionate justice, and honest lament. It does not reenact injury, celebrate suffering, shame damaged teeth, or use a body metaphor to diagnose another person's morality.
Exod.21.27
Shen is a Hebrew noun for a tooth and, by association with tusks or hardness, ivory. Some contexts extend the sharp shape to a projection. Construct phrases and the surrounding human, animal, material, or geographic referent select the sense.
The New Testament addresses retaliation, enemy love, bodily care, enslaved persons, wealth, and gnashing through distinct Greek vocabulary. Canonical reflection should preserve each legal and poetic setting rather than treating every tooth expression as one prediction.