Concealment or a hiding place can serve protection, ordinary privacy or hidden wrongdoing, and the passage must identify its actual purpose. Psalm 27 describes the Lord sheltering the praying person in a day of trouble.
Reading a lexicon entry
What this page is: Each lexicon entry shows the original Hebrew or Greek word behind the English translation: its meaning, its range of use, and where it appears in Scripture.
Strong's number: The Strong's code (H- or G-) is the standard reference number for this word. It connects this entry to chapter and passage language tabs.
Where it appears: The witness passages show where this word is used in context. Click any to open the study page for that passage.
This lexicon entry is part of our ongoing editorial review. If you notice missing content, unclear wording, or a possible correction, please send us a note through theConnect page. Screenshots are helpful.
Reader summary
Full entry for סֵתֶר (H5643) · Open the biblical lexicon
Concealment or a hiding place can serve protection, ordinary privacy or hidden wrongdoing, and the passage must identify its actual purpose. Psalm 27 describes the Lord sheltering the praying person in a day of trouble.
The BSB source-word alignment has 36 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include in secret (8), a refuge (2), in the shelter (2), privately (2), secretly (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Deuteronomy 13:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (10), Deuteronomy (5), Isaiah (5), Job (5).
Concealment or a hiding place can serve protection, ordinary privacy or hidden wrongdoing, and the passage must identify its actual purpose. Psalm 27 describes the Lord sheltering the praying person in a day of trouble. Jonathan tells David to hide after Saul orders his killing. Deuteronomy condemns a carved or molten idol set up in secret, while Isaiah records the Lord saying that He has not spoken in secret and that He speaks what is true and right.
Hiddenness therefore receives no single moral judgment from the noun itself. Ask who is covered, from what danger or scrutiny, and what action is concealed. Protecting a threatened person must not be confused with protecting an aggressor's reputation, and condemning secret idolatry does not make all confidentiality or private grief sinful. The actual account or oracle supplies the assessment.
Protective shelter, a warning to hide from threatened killing, secret idolatry and the Lord's stated truthful speech have distinct purposes. Hiddenness is assessed through the people and actions involved rather than treated as automatically holy or evil.
For in the day of trouble He will hide me in His shelter; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will set me high upon a rock.
Shelter and concealment belong to the speaker's trust in the Lord during trouble, followed by praise and a renewed plea for mercy; the image does not require denying the threat.
‘Cursed is the man who makes a carved idol or molten image—an abomination to the Lord, the work of the hands of a craftsman—and sets it up in secret.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
The proclaimed curse concerns a crafted idol set up in secret within Israel's stated covenant instruction, not every private object or confidential conversation.
I have not spoken in secret, from a place in a land of darkness. I did not say to the descendants of Jacob, ‘Seek Me in a wasteland.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I say what is right.
The Lord explicitly says He has not spoken in secret or directed Jacob to seek Him in a wasteland, and grounds the statement in His truthful and right speech.
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. Concealment that shields either protection or secrecy—moral valence depends on context and agent's intent.
Concealment that shields either protection or secrecy—moral valence depends on context and agent's intent.
a cover (in a good or a bad, a literal or a figurative sense) BDB: covering Usage: backbiting, covering, covert, × disguise(-th), hiding place, privily, protection, secret(-ly, place).
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 1 selected witness from 36 lexical occurrence verses.
סֵתֶר 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.
Jonathan's warning identifies both the danger and the purpose of a secret place: Saul intends to kill David, so David should hide while Jonathan seeks further information and speaks against the proposed wrong. That protective concealment must not be made equivalent to the secret idol condemned in Deuteronomy. Psalm 27 supplies a praying person's confidence in the Lord's shelter while still asking for mercy.
Isaiah supplies another statement, the Lord's own contrast between secret obscurity and His truthful, right speech. These different settings prevent the cover noun from becoming a fixed judgment about privacy. Teaching can expose concealed wrongdoing while respecting concealment that protects someone in danger. It must not demand public disclosure of everything, promise that a hidden location is physically invulnerable or turn the Lord's shelter into an invisible technique.
The actual people, actions and purposes give hiddenness its significance.
Ps.27.5
The licensed Hebrew noun concerns covering or concealment in literal and figurative, favorable and unfavorable settings. The passage determines whether it is shelter, privacy or hidden wrongdoing. Different covering and hiding verbs remain separate families, and the noun itself supplies no supernatural concealment method or comprehensive rule about confidentiality.
Matthew 6:5-6 directs prayer in an inner room in contrast to being seen by others, supplying a separately stated favorable use of privacy. Hebrews 13:2 describes hospitality given without full awareness of the visitors' identity. These Greek settings remain distinct from the Hebrew cover family and do not turn secret wrongdoing, protective concealment and ordinary privacy into one moral category.