tsalmavet · deep darkness

What it means

tsalmavet (צַלְמָוֶת) is a Hebrew word of the Bible that means “deep darkness”.

The thickest gloom. The word joins "shadow" and "death"; it is used for extreme danger, for the densest darkness and for the place of the dead.

How to say it

Approximate pronunciation. Vowels sound as in Spanish (a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in note, u as in rule); the syllable in bold is stressed. The voice is your device's.

Its senses in the Bible

1. A very deep darkness; deadly danger.

From Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906)

Related words

Words of the same family, by Strong’s numbering.

Where it appears

• Job×10
• Psalms×4
• Isaiah×1
• Jeremiah×2
• Amos×1

• Job 3:5

  May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; may a cloud settle on it; may the darkenings of the day terrify it.

• Job 10:21

  before I go, and do not return, to the land of darkness and shadow of death,

• Job 10:22

  a land of blackness like gloom, of shadow of death and without order, and it shines forth like gloom.”

• Job 12:22

  He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings out to light the shadow of death.

• Job 16:16

  My face is red from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death,

• Job 24:17

  For to all of them morning is the shadow of death, for they recognize the terrors of the shadow of death.

• Job 28:3

  He sets an end to darkness, and to every limit he searches out the stone of gloom and of the shadow of death.

• Job 34:22

  There is no darkness, and no shadow of death where those who work wickedness may hide.

• Job 38:17

  Have the gates of death been revealed to you, and the gates of the shadow of death have you seen?

• Psalms 23:4

  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

• Psalms 44:19

  though you have crushed us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.

• Psalms 107:10

  Those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, prisoners of affliction and of iron,

• Psalms 107:14

  He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and their bonds he tore apart.

• Isaiah 9:2

  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of the shadow of death, light has shone on them.

• Jeremiah 2:6

  And they did not say, ‘Where is YHWH, who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of steppe and pits, through a land of drought and the shadow of death, through a land through which no man passed and where no human being lived?’

• Jeremiah 13:16

  Give to YHWH your Elohim glory before he brings darkness, and before your feet stumble on the mountains of twilight, and you wait for light, and he turns it into the shadow of death, makes it into dense cloud.

• Amos 5:8

  The one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns the shadow of death into morning, and darkens day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the face of the earth: YHWH is his name.

And 1 more times.