This noun names clothing, often a garment that covers the body and supplies practical protection. Its importance becomes clear when Scripture asks who possesses that covering and how another person treats it.
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Full entry for שִׂמְלָה (H8071) · Open the biblical lexicon
This noun names clothing, often a garment that covers the body and supplies practical protection. Its importance becomes clear when Scripture asks who possesses that covering and how another person treats it.
The BSB source-word alignment has 29 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include his clothes (4), their clothes (3), a garment (2), and clothing (2), [for] (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 9:23. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (7), Deuteronomy (6), Exodus (6), Isaiah (4).
This noun names clothing, often a garment that covers the body and supplies practical protection. Its importance becomes clear when Scripture asks who possesses that covering and how another person treats it. Exodus 22:27 places a poor neighbor's cloak within the Lord's compassionate concern: taking security for a loan must not deprive the borrower of a covering for the night.
Deuteronomy 10:18 describes God's love for the foreigner through food and clothing. Genesis 9:23 presents a garment used to cover Noah without staring at his exposure. These passages give ordinary cloth different narrative and moral roles. The garment itself does not confer righteousness or erase wrongdoing. It makes bodily need visible and calls attention to the conduct of those who can protect, exploit, provide for, or humiliate another person.
Clothing appears in household life, public vulnerability and covenant commands. These selected passages move from respectful covering to a borrower's night protection and God's provision for the foreigner.
Then Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it across their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
Shem and Japheth cover their father without looking at his exposure; the garment serves their deliberate restraint rather than excusing his drunkenness.
Because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? And if he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.
The borrower's only covering explains why pledged clothing must be returned by sunset; God's compassion limits the lender's use of economic power.
He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing.
Food and clothing make God's love for the foreigner concrete, and the following command calls Israel to corresponding love for strangers.
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. Outer garment worn as visible marker of status, dignity, or covenant identity in OT narrative
Outer garment worn as visible marker of status, dignity, or covenant identity in OT narrative
a dress, especially a mantle BDB: wrapper Usage: apparel, cloth(-es, -ing), garment, raiment. Compare 8008.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
שִׂמְלָה 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.
Exodus 22:27 refuses to let the lender think only about a transaction. A garment held as security may be the borrower's only way to keep warm while sleeping. The Lord asks what else that person will sleep in, and promises to hear the cry of need. Economic responsibility is therefore measured in relation to a real neighbor, not merely the strength of a claim over property.
Teaching this passage can expose indifference without pretending that every modern lending arrangement has the same covenant form. Deuteronomy 10 adds that giving clothing belongs to God's expressed love for the foreigner. Christian generosity can learn from that compassionate character while receiving salvation through Christ rather than purchasing favor by distributing garments.
Exod.22.27
The noun identifies the covering, while surrounding verbs establish whether it is worn, given, pledged or used to cover someone. Moral meaning comes from those relationships rather than the material object alone.
Exodus protects a borrower's covering and Deuteronomy names clothing among God's gifts to the foreigner. James 2:15-16 presses the related need for embodied care within the church. This is a comparison of practical mercy across passages, not evidence that the Greek wording translates this Hebrew noun or that charity earns justification.