the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Bible Dictionaries
Booty
Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words
or Shâlâl (שָׁלָל, Strong's #7998), “booty; prey; spoil; plunder; gain.” This word occurs 75 times and in all periods of biblical Hebrew.Shâlâl literally means “prey,” which an animal tracks down, kills, and eats: “Benjamin shall raven as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey [shâlâl], and at night he shall divide the spoil” (Gen. 49:27—the first occurrence).
The word may mean “booty” or “spoil of war,” which includes anything and everything a soldier or army captures from an enemy and carries off: “But the women, and the little ones, … even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself …” (Deut. 20:14). An entire nation can be “plunder” or a “spoil of war” (Jer. 50:10). To “save one’s own life as booty” is to have one’s life spared (cf. Jer. 21:9).
Shâlâl is used in a few passages of “private plunder”: “Woe unto them that … turn aside the needy from judgment, and … take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!” (Isa. 10:1-2).
This word may also represent “private gain”: “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil” (Prov. 31:11).
These files are public domain.
Vines, W. E., M. A. Entry for 'Booty'. Vine's Expository Dictionary of OT Words. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/vot/b/booty.html. 1940.
