An untruth ; by implication, a sham (often adverbial)
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שֶׁקֶר is the Hebrew noun for falsehood, lie, deception — but its range is wider than a single English word captures. BDB's definitions include: falsehood, lying, deception, what is false, disappointment, and vanity (in the sense of what comes to nothing).
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Full entry for שֶׁקֶר (H8267) · Open the biblical lexicon
שֶׁקֶר is the Hebrew noun for falsehood, lie, deception — but its range is wider than a single English word captures. BDB's definitions include: falsehood, lying, deception, what is false, disappointment, and vanity (in the sense of what comes to nothing).
The BSB source-word alignment has 113 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include lies (13), . . . (9), falsely (9), a lie (6), a lying (6).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Exodus 5:9. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (37), Psalms (22), Proverbs (20), Isaiah (7).
שֶׁקֶר is the Hebrew noun for falsehood, lie, deception — but its range is wider than a single English word captures. BDB's definitions include: falsehood, lying, deception, what is false, disappointment, and vanity (in the sense of what comes to nothing). The root idea is that which does not correspond to reality — the word, the action, or the claim that presents a false picture.
שֶׁקֶר is currently counted by the local OT index at about 113 uses across several major registers. First, the judicial register: 'you shall not bear false witness' (Exod 20:16 uses שָׁוְא, the synonym, but Exod 23:7 uses שֶׁקֶר — 'keep far from a false matter'); a witness who testifies שֶׁקֶר destroys justice at its source. Second, the prophetic register: the false prophets speak שֶׁקֶר (Jer 14:14, 'prophesying a lie'; Jer 23:25-26, 'they prophesy lies in my name; I did not send them'); the prophet who claims to speak for God when God has not sent them is the paradigmatic שֶׁקֶר-speaker.
Third, the idolatry register: idols are called שֶׁקֶר because they are false — they claim divine status they do not have; Jer 10:14 calls the idol-maker's product שֶׁקֶר ('the molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them'). Fourth, the relational register: friends and allies who prove unfaithful are called שֶׁקֶר; trust that is not warranted by reality is trust placed in falsehood.
The Psalms' use of שֶׁקֶר is particularly concentrated: Psalm 119 alone uses it 8 times to express the psalmist's hatred of falsehood and love of the true (אֱמֶת) in contrast. The fundamental theological claim embedded in שֶׁקֶר is that the God who is true (אֱמֶת is one of his primary attributes) is the judge of all שֶׁקֶר. Jeremiah's contrast between the false prophets who speak שֶׁקֶר and the true prophet who speaks what God actually said is the OT's paradigmatic account of the conflict between the true word and the false word.
שֶׁקֶר is currently counted by the local OT index at about 113 uses across four major registers: (1) the judicial — false witness in court; (2) the prophetic — false prophets who claim to speak for God; (3) the idolatry — idols as inherently false, non-existent powers; (4) the relational — trust that proves unfounded. These registers share the core meaning: that which does not correspond to reality, that which will ultimately be shown to be nothing.
“The prophets are prophesying lies in My name,” replied the Lord. “I did not send them or appoint them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a false vision, a worthless divination, the futility and delusion of their own minds.
God's verdict on the false prophets uses שֶׁקֶר for the content of their prophecy: 'they prophesy שֶׁקֶר in my name.' The compound charge is that they claim divine authorization ('in my name'), but God did not send them, did not command them, did not speak to them. The שֶׁקֶר here is not random deception but the specific deception of false divine speech — claiming to represent the word of God when God has not spoken.
This is one of the OT's most serious categories of שֶׁקֶר: it corrupts the channel through which God is supposed to communicate with his people.
I hate and abhor falsehood, but Your law I love.
Psalm 119's anti-שֶׁקֶר statement places the love of Torah and the hatred of falsehood as the two sides of a single commitment. 'I hate and abhor שֶׁקֶר; I love your law (תּוֹרָה).' The intensified verb ('hate and abhor') matches the intensified love ('I love'): the same energy that turns toward the true word turns away from the false. The Psalm does not present this as a casual preference but as the defining orientation of the person who has been formed by God's word — the one who loves the Torah is necessarily the one who hates everything that opposes it.
Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.
The idol polemic uses שֶׁקֶר for the ontological status of the idol: 'his molten image is שֶׁקֶר, and there is no breath in them.' The idol is not just functionally useless — it is categorically false: it claims to be divine, to have power, to receive worship, but such claims are שֶׁקֶר because there is no breath (רוּחַ) in it. The contrast with the Lord, who breathed the breath of life into humanity (Gen 2:7), is implicit but clear.
שֶׁקֶר as applied to idols is the OT's way of naming the ontological deficit: the idol does not exist as what it claims to be.
He who speaks the truth declares what is right, but a false witness speaks deceit.
Proverbs' contrast between the truthful witness (עֵד אֱמֶת) and the false witness (עֵד שְׁקָרִים, literally 'witness of falsehoods') uses שֶׁקֶר in its judicial register. The social function of testimony depends entirely on whether the witness corresponds to reality (אֱמֶת) or misrepresents it (שֶׁקֶר). The parallel with G1124 γραφή is structural: the true written word (γραφή) and the false spoken word (שֶׁקֶר) represent the two poles of the witness question — does the testimony correspond to what is real?
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. Deception spanning utterance to substance: false words, false things, false actions—a comprehensive term for anything counterfeit or misleading.
Deception spanning utterance to substance: false words, false things, false actions—a comprehensive term for anything counterfeit or misleading.
an untruth; by implication, a sham (often adverbial) BDB: deception Usage: without a cause, deceit(-ful), false(-hood, -ly), feignedly, liar, lie, lying, vain (thing), wrongfully.
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 113 lexical occurrence verses.
שֶׁקֶר is built from this root:
The wicked appear to gain but their reward proves false and unstable. Proverbs 11:18
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
שֶׁקֶר is the OT's word for what God cannot be and what his word cannot contain. The prophets' most devastating accusation against the false prophets is not that they were wrong about the details — it is that they spoke שֶׁקֶר in the Lord's name. They took the channel of divine communication and filled it with what did not correspond to reality. They said 'peace, peace' when there was no peace (Jer 6:14).
They told the people what the people wanted to hear. And God's verdict is stark: 'I did not send them, I did not speak to them.' The false prophet is the paradigmatic שֶׁקֶר figure: someone who claims the authority of the true word but whose speech is the opposite of truth. The Psalm 119 response to שֶׁקֶר is instructive: 'I hate and abhor falsehood; I love your law.'
The psalmist does not merely prefer truth — they hate falsehood. The energy of the commitment runs in both directions: the same love that orients toward the true word is the energy that turns away from the false one. The person formed by God's true word cannot be neutral toward what misrepresents it. For the preacher, שֶׁקֶר is the word that names the great temptation of ministry: to speak what people want to hear rather than what is true, to manage impressions rather than to declare reality.
The false prophets in Jeremiah were not cynics — many of them probably believed what they were saying. שֶׁקֶר can be sincerely believed and still be שֶׁקֶר. What God asks the true prophet to carry is the correspondence between word and reality — the refusal to say 'peace' when there is no peace — and that correspondence is what makes the true word the true word.
Jer.14.14
שֶׁקֶר is a masculine noun whose root is not clearly identified (BDB notes uncertainty about the verbal root). Its usage, however, is consistent: the word covers the false claim, the lying speech, the deceptive action, and the thing that does not exist as it presents itself. The adverbial use of שֶׁקֶר (in vain, falsely, for nothing) in phrases like 'you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain' (Exod 20:7 uses לַשָּׁוְא, the synonym, but שֶׁקֶר appears in similar constructions elsewhere) covers the dimension of empty swearing.
The primary synonyms are כָּזָב (H3576, to lie, deceive — verb; כָּזָב H3577, lie) and שָׁוְא (H7723, vanity, emptiness, falsehood — particularly in the ninth commandment). The LXX translates שֶׁקֶר with ψεῦδος (falsehood), ψευδής (false), and related words. The NT's ψεῦδος carries a broad שֶׁקֶר range: the false prophet (ψευδοπροφήτης), the false witness (ψευδομάρτυς), the false Christ (ψευδόχριστος), and the lie that is the devil's native language (John 8:44).
The NT inherits שֶׁקֶר through ψεῦδος and concentrates it in three locations. First, John 8:44: Jesus traces lying and falsehood to a spiritual source — the devil, who 'does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.' The devil is the original שֶׁקֶר-speaker: the one whose speech is designed to misrepresent reality and lead others away from truth.
The garden temptation (Gen 3) is the paradigmatic instance. Second, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12: the 'man of lawlessness' operates 'with all wicked deception (ψεύδους) for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth.' The שֶׁקֶר of the false prophets in Jeremiah finds its eschatological form in the final deception that accompanies the return of Christ.
Third, Revelation 21:8 and 21:27: those who practice שֶׁקֶר (ψεῦδος) are excluded from the new Jerusalem; 'nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.' The final eschatological judgment pictures the elimination of שֶׁקֶר from the creation that God declares to be entirely true (Rev 21:5, 'these words are trustworthy and true').
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