שֶׁ֫גֶר

# Shéger: Offspring in Biblical Hebrew The Hebrew word *shéger* (שֶׁ֫גֶר) denotes "offspring"—the young produced by animals or humans. Based on its five occurrences in the biblical text, this term carries a straightforward, literal meaning without apparent metaphorical extension. The word appears rarely enough to suggest it functioned as a specific rather than common term for progeny, likely reserved for particular contexts where the concept of offspring required explicit mention. The limited frequency of *shéger* in the biblical corpus (only five instances) indicates it was not the primary vocabulary choice for discussing descendants or children. This rarity suggests the word may have been used in specialized contexts—perhaps when discussing animals' young, legal matters concerning inheritance, or situations where biological progeny required precise terminology. Without access to the specific biblical passages where it appears, we cannot determine whether it was applied exclusively to animal young, human children, or both; however, its definition encompasses offspring more broadly. For modern readers, *shéger* represents one of several Hebrew terms available to biblical authors for discussing reproduction and descent. Its scarcity in the biblical text itself indicates that more common alternatives (such as *ben*, "son," or *yeladim*, "children") typically served communicative needs, making *shéger* a supplementary option when specific emphasis on offspring as biological product

AI synthesis uses only provided lexicon data -- never training knowledge.