A year (as a revolution of time)
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.
H8141, šāneh, is the Hebrew noun for a year and, in plural or numbered constructions, for years as a measured span. A year can locate an event, state a person's age, mark a reign, count an interval, or organize covenant practices.
Reader summary
Full entry for שָׁנֶה (H8141) · Open the biblical lexicon
H8141, šāneh, is the Hebrew noun for a year and, in plural or numbered constructions, for years as a measured span. A year can locate an event, state a person's age, mark a reign, count an interval, or organize covenant practices.
The BSB source-word alignment has 876 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include years (255), . . . (241), year (188), years old (20), a year (12).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Genesis (161), 2 Kings (104), Numbers (92), 2 Chronicles (78).
H8141, šāneh, is the Hebrew noun for a year and, in plural or numbered constructions, for years as a measured span. A year can locate an event, state a person's age, mark a reign, count an interval, or organize covenant practices. The noun supplies a unit of chronology; it does not by itself explain why an event occurred, whether a life was faithful, or what God will do in a future year.
The governed identity is singular. Common OSHB forms such as singular šānāh and plural šānîm belong to the word's inflectional evidence and must not replace the selected citation form with the plural artifact label "shanim." Genesis 1 names years alongside seasons and days within the created work of the heavenly lights. Measured time is part of creaturely life under God, yet the verse does not present the lights or numbered years as instruments for divination.
Leviticus 25 counts to the fiftieth year and joins Jubilee to holiness, liberty, return, and protection from economic exploitation. That covenant calendar bears enduring witness to God's concern for worship and neighbor justice, but it is not a warrant to impose ancient Israel's land law unchanged upon another covenant community or modern state. Psalm 90 contrasts God's everlasting life with mortal years and describes seventy or eighty years in poetic reflection before asking for a wise heart, compassion, joy, and established work.
It is neither a guaranteed lifespan nor permission to rank people by age, health, productivity, or longevity. Isaiah 61 proclaims the year of the Lord's favor and comfort for mourners, while Jeremiah 29 locates seventy years within the historical exile and promised return from Babylon. These named years carry their passage-specific promises. They do not authorize date-setting, numerology, deterministic explanations of loss, or impatience with people whose waiting lasts longer than expected.
H8141 helps readers count faithfully, remember honestly, receive each age with dignity, and distinguish a measured year from the meaning God gives particular years in Scripture.
H8141 is distributed throughout biblical narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, chronology, age notices, reign formulas, and covenant calendars. It consistently provides a year as a countable measure, while the surrounding passage determines whether those years mark creation order, worship, justice, life, exile, judgment, or hope.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years.
Years are one of several created markers named with seasons and days as the lights distinguish day from night and order human time.
So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.
The fiftieth year is consecrated as Jubilee, joining Israel's counted calendar to liberty, return, holiness, and protection from economic exploitation.
The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we are strong—yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
The prayer speaks honestly of seventy or eighty years, labor, sorrow, and passing life, then asks God for wisdom, compassion, joy, and established work.
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of our God’s vengeance, to comfort all who mourn,
The anointed Servant proclaims the Lord's favor, God's vengeance, and comfort for mourners, so year language carries prophetic proclamation rather than an arithmetic code.
For this is what the Lord says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.
Seventy years belong to the exiles in Babylon and God's promise to restore them; the number is not presented as a portable schedule for private delay.
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. Cyclical time unit marking natural revolutions; foundational for age, covenant seasons, and divine chronology
Cyclical time unit marking natural revolutions; foundational for age, covenant seasons, and divine chronology
a year (as a revolution of time) BDB: year Usage: whole age, × long, old, year(× -ly).
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 880 lexical occurrence verses.
שָׁנֶה is built from this root:
The word represents the span or length of a person's life.Isaiah 21:13-17
The specified time frame underscores divine control over duration.Proverbs 10:27
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Psalm 90:10 speaks about human years inside a prayer addressed to the everlasting God. The psalm remembers human return to dust, the weight of sin, the brevity of life, and the sorrow that can fill even strong years. Its reference to seventy or eighty years is a sober poetic observation, not a contract guaranteeing a minimum or setting an expiration date. The prayer's movement matters: "Teach us to number our days" leads toward wisdom, compassion, renewed joy, God's visible work, and the establishment of human labor.
Counting time is meant to humble and orient us, not to grade the elderly, blame those who die young, or hurry mourners toward emotional closure. Other H8141 passages broaden that wisdom. Genesis 1 presents years within created temporal order. Leviticus 25 makes counted years serve worship, liberty, return, and economic restraint in Israel's Jubilee. Isaiah 61 fills a proclaimed year with favor, justice, and comfort, while Jeremiah 29 binds seventy years to a particular exilic generation that must reject false promises, seek the city's good, and wait for God's restoration.
The noun year does not generate those meanings by itself; each passage supplies them. Responsible teaching can honor birthdays, anniversaries, long obedience, and hard seasons without making longevity a reward scale or chronology a machine for reading providence. It can also receive Israel's calendars as canonical witness without erasing their covenant setting or speaking contemptuously about Jewish practice.
Ps.90.10
The selected Hebrew identity is שָׁנֶה, transliterated šāneh. Governed OSHB evidence also preserves the common singular surface שָׁנָה, šānāh, and the plural שָׁנִים, šānîm, together with construct and dual forms; these belong to morphology and verse-level explanation rather than replacing the locked singular citation identity.
Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:19 and announces the year of the Lord's favor with the distinct Greek noun G1763, eniautos. The canonical connection centers on Jesus' mission and Isaiah's promise, not on a one-to-one equation with every year term, the rejection of Israel's Scriptures, or a calculable end-times calendar.