A highway or thoroughfare provides a route for travel, and biblical passages also use a road image to describe conduct or preparation. First Samuel narrates the cows taking a straight road toward Beth-shemesh as they carry the ark.
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Full entry for מְסִלָּה (H4546) · Open the biblical lexicon
A highway or thoroughfare provides a route for travel, and biblical passages also use a road image to describe conduct or preparation. First Samuel narrates the cows taking a straight road toward Beth-shemesh as they carry the ark.
The BSB source-word alignment has 27 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include highway (3), the road (3), a highway (2), of the road (2), on the road (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Numbers 20:19. Its strongest book concentrations include Isaiah (9), Judges (5), 2 Samuel (3), 1 Chronicles (2).
A highway or thoroughfare provides a route for travel, and biblical passages also use a road image to describe conduct or preparation. First Samuel narrates the cows taking a straight road toward Beth-shemesh as they carry the ark. Isaiah calls for a straight highway for the Lord within words of comfort and His coming. Proverbs describes the highway of the upright as turning away from evil.
These passages do not all give directions to the same place or use the road for the same purpose. Jeremiah's return instructions and a psalm's pilgrimage language add further settings. Read the traveler, destination and surrounding statement before deciding whether the road is a physical route, a poetic image or a description of conduct.
A narrated route, Isaiah's preparation image and the upright person's path show how highway language serves physical travel and different contextual figures without one hidden map.
And the cows headed straight up the road toward Beth-shemesh, staying on that one highway and lowing as they went, never straying to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed behind them to the border of Beth-shemesh.
The cows follow the straight road toward Beth-shemesh while carrying the ark, so the route belongs to a specific narrated journey rather than an abstract moral formula.
A voice of one calling: “Prepare the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert.
The wilderness call prepares a straight highway for the Lord within the surrounding comfort announcement; its significance comes from that proclamation.
The highway of the upright leads away from evil; he who guards his way protects his life.
The highway of the upright is defined by turning away from evil, and the following statement connects guarding one's way with preserving one's life.
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. Engineered pathway suggesting intentional construction and preparation, often used metaphorically for God's way or moral course
Engineered pathway suggesting intentional construction and preparation, often used metaphorically for God's way or moral course
a thoroughfare (as turnpiked), literally or figuratively; specifically a viaduct, a staircase BDB: highway Usage: causeway, course, highway, path, terrace.
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 27 lexical occurrence verses.
מְסִלָּה is built from this root:
The highway imagery conveys unhindered return and covenant restoration.Isaiah 11:11-16
The highway symbolizes open access and reconciled movement between former enemies.Isaiah 19:23-25
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Proverbs supplies its own explanation of the upright person's highway: turning away from evil. The image should therefore lead to attention to conduct rather than to speculation about a physical road. First Samuel's cows, by contrast, travel on an actual route toward Beth-shemesh within the ark's return narrative. Isaiah's wilderness call belongs to a proclamation of comfort and preparation for the Lord, while Jeremiah gives return markers for Israel.
These are related through road language but not interchangeable in purpose. A useful study keeps the setting visible and asks where the passage is directing attention. Readers can then appreciate both the concrete route and the figurative force without assigning every highway the same spiritual meaning or using a poetic image to calculate a modern itinerary.
Prov.16.17
The licensed comparison gives a literal or figurative thoroughfare range. Physical travel, prophetic road imagery and a wisdom description are established by their sentences; the noun itself does not decide which kind of path is present.
John 1:23 explicitly presents the Baptist's reply in Isaiah's words about making straight the way for the Lord. That quotation provides the textual connection; it does not establish that every Hebrew highway occurrence has the same referent or that the Greek wording is a new identity for the Hebrew noun.