Machaseh names shelter or refuge, with its reliability and purpose supplied by the passage. Psalm 46 calls God the community's refuge amid upheaval, and Psalm 62 invites people to pour out their hearts before Him.
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Full entry for מַחֲסֶה (H4268) · Open the biblical lexicon
Machaseh names shelter or refuge, with its reliability and purpose supplied by the passage. Psalm 46 calls God the community's refuge amid upheaval, and Psalm 62 invites people to pour out their hearts before Him.
The BSB source-word alignment has 20 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include my refuge (4), a refuge (2), refuge (2), [are] my refuge (1), [You are] my refuge (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Job 24:8. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (12), Isaiah (4), Jeremiah (1), Job (1).
Machaseh names shelter or refuge, with its reliability and purpose supplied by the passage. Psalm 46 calls God the community's refuge amid upheaval, and Psalm 62 invites people to pour out their hearts before Him. Such confidence does not deny trouble or forbid honest prayer. Other uses remain materially concrete: Job describes exposed poor people huddling against rocks because they lack shelter, and Psalm 104 names cliffs as refuge for rock badgers.
Isaiah exposes a contrary claim when leaders make lies their refuge and imagine that disaster cannot touch them. Justice and righteousness reveal the failure of that hiding place. The noun therefore does not certify everything called safe. It directs readers toward the actual protector, those seeking cover and the truthfulness of the promise. Trust in God can accompany providing housing, protecting threatened people and challenging systems that shelter falsehood rather than those in need.
The selected shelter passages hold together God as refuge, honest prayer, exposed poverty, animal habitat and the collapse of a refuge built on lies.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in times of trouble.
God is named refuge and help in trouble before the psalm describes shaking earth, surging waters and troubled nations.
Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. Selah
The invitation to trust includes pouring out the heart, so refuge permits honest dependence rather than suppression of distress.
Drenched by mountain rains, they huddle against the rocks for want of shelter.
Job describes drenched people without shelter amid dispossession and exploitation; their exposure must not become evidence of inferior faith.
For you said, “We have made a covenant with death; we have fashioned an agreement with Sheol. When the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not touch us, because we have made lies our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.”
The leaders claim immunity by making lies their refuge, a boast the following divine response explicitly overturns.
I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the level. Hail will sweep away your refuge of lies, and water will flood your hiding place.
Justice and righteousness measure the claimed shelter, and the refuge of lies is swept away rather than affirmed.
The high mountains are for the wild goats, the cliffs a refuge for the rock badgers.
Cliffs provide a refuge for rock badgers within a creation psalm, preserving a literal habitat rather than a hidden salvation claim.
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. A place of refuge offering both physical protection and metaphorical safety; divine shelter in covenantal trust language
A place of refuge offering both physical protection and metaphorical safety; divine shelter in covenantal trust language
a shelter (literally or figuratively) BDB: refuge Usage: hope, (place of) refuge, shelter, trust.
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 20 lexical occurrence verses.
מַחֲסֶה is built from this root:
False shelters are exposed when divine judgment arrives.Isaiah 28:14-22
Highlights the misplaced security sought in Egypt.Isaiah 30:1-7
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Psalm 62 locates refuge in God and immediately invites people to pour out their hearts. Dependence is compatible with truthful speech about fear, injury and need. Psalm 46 similarly names help in trouble before describing upheaval; its confession is not a report that faithful communities never face danger. Job 24 supplies a searching material contrast. People are driven into deprivation, drenched by rain and left without shelter, so a sermon about refuge should retain the reality of housing and protection rather than spiritualize their exposure.
Isaiah 28 confronts leaders who use the same shelter language for lies. Their asserted immunity collapses under justice and righteousness. A religious claim to safety deserves moral testing, especially where it conceals wrongdoing or discourages help. Psalm 104 adds an ordinary creaturely use: cliffs shelter rock badgers. The word can name real cover without carrying every divine-refuge promise.
Teachers can invite prayerful trust while helping communities provide dependable shelter and refusing to equate institutional loyalty with safety.
Ps.62.8
This masculine noun appears in absolute and construct forms, including possessive expressions such as my refuge and our refuge. Its object and sentence distinguish divine protection, physical shelter and a condemned refuge of lies.
First Peter 2:4-10 explicitly quotes Isaiah's chosen cornerstone and builds its account of God's people around Christ. That reception can accompany Isaiah 28's rejection of false security, while the Hebrew shelter noun itself neither names every church institution safe nor guarantees immunity from injury.