A root belongs to a plant, while Scripture also uses the image for stability, a named family's promised growth or a source of poisonous fruit. Jeremiah compares the person trusting the Lord with a waterside tree sending roots toward the stream.
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 שֶׁרֶשׁ (H8328) · Open the biblical lexicon
A root belongs to a plant, while Scripture also uses the image for stability, a named family's promised growth or a source of poisonous fruit. Jeremiah compares the person trusting the Lord with a waterside tree sending roots toward the stream.
The BSB source-word alignment has 33 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include its roots (3), root (3), . . . (2), take root (2), - (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Deuteronomy 29:18. Its strongest book concentrations include Job (9), Isaiah (7), Ezekiel (5), Hosea (2).
A root belongs to a plant, while Scripture also uses the image for stability, a named family's promised growth or a source of poisonous fruit. Jeremiah compares the person trusting the Lord with a waterside tree sending roots toward the stream. Job speaks of old tree roots that may respond to water, then contrasts the tree's prospect with his questions about human death.
Isaiah announces a shoot from Jesse's stump and a branch from his roots. These images do not make every root a reference to the same person or doctrine. Deuteronomy also warns against a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit when it names hearts turning toward other gods. Follow the actual plant or explicitly assigned comparison, keeping trust, lament, promised rule and corrupt allegiance distinct.
The noun alone supplies neither a universal recovery promise nor a diagnosis of hidden corruption in a particular distressed person.
A trusting person's waterside roots, Job's old tree and Jesse's promised branch give roots different stated roles. The poisonous-root warning supplies another explicit comparison, so origin and stability are assessed through their actual fruit and context.
He is like a tree planted by the waters that sends out its roots toward the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes, and its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year of drought, nor does it cease to produce fruit.
The rooted waterside tree compares with the person who trusts the Lord, retaining heat and drought in the picture while the following words locate searching the heart with the Lord.
If its roots grow old in the ground and its stump dies in the soil,
Job pictures old roots and a dying stump responding to water, then raises questions about a person's death; the tree's possible renewal must not be reported as an uncomplicated promise of human recovery.
Then a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The shoot, stump and roots explicitly belong to Jesse in the announced branch picture, followed by the Spirit's resting and righteous judgment; generic roots elsewhere do not automatically receive that identity.
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. Root as foundation of life or being—literal plant roots extend to figurative rootedness in covenant, stability, and ancestral continuity
Root as foundation of life or being—literal plant roots extend to figurative rootedness in covenant, stability, and ancestral continuity
a root (literally or figuratively) BDB: root Usage: bottom, deep, heel, root.
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 33 lexical occurrence verses.
שֶׁרֶשׁ is built from this root:
The root of Jesse signifies both continuity with David and foundational hope for the nations.Hosea 9:10-17
Root struck implies irreversible decline.Isaiah 11:1-10
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Jeremiah's tree remains pictured beside heat and drought, but its roots reach toward the stream. The comparison directs attention to the person's stated trust in the Lord rather than a claim that difficult seasons never occur. Job's old roots belong to another movement: hope for a cut tree sharpens his questions about a human life laid low in death. Isaiah explicitly gives Jesse as the origin of the shoot and branch, while Deuteronomy explicitly connects poisonous fruit with a heart turned toward other gods.
A teacher must therefore follow each comparison instead of collecting roots into one invisible explanation for everything. The word can make origin, connection and fruit concrete, but the passage supplies their theological assessment. It does not authorize a private root-cause diagnosis of grief, illness or a community's difficulties, nor does it promise that every loss will be reversed on a listener's chosen schedule.
Jer.17.8
The licensed Hebrew root noun has literal and figurative uses. Plant roots, Jesse's named roots and the poisonous-root warning receive their object or comparison from the passage. The noun is not a technical psychological root cause, and overlapping English origin language does not merge separate Hebrew or Greek lexical identities.
Romans 15:12 explicitly quotes Isaiah's Root of Jesse within Paul's argument about Gentile hope, providing a traceable canonical connection rather than identifying every plant root with that promise. Hebrews 12:14-15 separately warns of a root of bitterness causing trouble and defilement; that warning must not become a diagnosis of every expression of grief.