2 Corinthians 4:8 · Symbol · Despair and Depression
The Words Shachach and Exaporeomai
The English words downcast and despair translate five verbs of the Old and New Testaments.
The verb that bows the singer's soul in the refrain of Psalm 42 also brings down human pride in Isaiah 2:17, where “the pride of man will be brought low”.
We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
- The word
- שָׁחַח (shachach), H7817
- First appears
- Job 9:13 “God does not restrain His anger; the helpers…”
Summary
Shachach is the Hebrew verb for bowing down or sinking low. Exaporeomai is the Greek verb for being utterly at a loss, which Paul uses of his despair of life in Asia. Beside them stand ya'ash, the Hebrew verb for giving up, and aporeo, the Greek verb for being perplexed. Each word takes its exact sense from the verse it stands in.
- Only the refrain of Psalms 42 and 43 uses shachach in a reflexive form, the soul bowing itself down.
- Paul admits in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that he is perplexed and denies that he is in despair.
- Judah says “It is hopeless!” with ya'ash and goes after foreign gods (Jeremiah 2:25).
- In Luke 6:35 apelpizo, a verb for despair in other Greek writing, means expecting nothing in return.
Words for a Soul Brought Low
A Hebrew verb of bowing and a Greek verb of being lost open the study.
This study reads five verbs of the Bible, with shachach and exaporeomai at length. It belongs to the trial of despair and depression, because these are the words Scripture uses when a believer's soul sinks or he can see no way out.
Its question is what each word means and how the words differ. It gives the five words in one table and follows shachach through the Psalms and Isaiah. It sets Paul's two Greek verbs side by side, reads ya'ash and apelpizo, and gives a caution on Hebrew words that look alike in English letters.
Where the Words Stand
The five senses run from bowing low to giving up hope.
Shachach is the commonest of the five words, and Paul's verb for despair stands only twice.
| Word | Sense in the STEP Bible lexicon | Uses | One use in the Berean words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | |||
| shachach, שָׁחַח, H7817, verb | to bow | 21 | Psalm 35:14, “I was bowed down with grief, like one mourning for his mother.” |
| ya'ash, יָאַשׁ, H2976, verb | to despair | 6 | Ecclesiastes 2:20, “So my heart began to despair over all the labor that I had done under the sun.” |
| Greek | |||
| exaporeomai, ἐξαπορέομαι, G1820, verb | to despair | 2 | 2 Corinthians 1:8, “so that we despaired even of life” |
| aporeo, ἀπορέω, G639, verb | be perplexed | 6 | Galatians 4:20, “I am perplexed about you” |
| apelpizo, ἀπελπίζω, G560, verb | to despair | 1 | Luke 6:35, “lend to them, expecting nothing in return” |
Bowed Down in Grief
The verb bends the body of the mourner and then the soul of the singer.
Strong's Concordance glosses shachach “to sink or depress (reflexive or causative)”, and the King James Version renders it bend, bow down, bring low and stoop.
I am bent and brought low; all day long I go about mourning.The verse stands here because the verb describes a body bent and brought low by grief, the plain sense the psalms build on.
In the refrain the verb turns inward. Franz Delitzsch, in his Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (English edition 1871), wrote that the reflexive form “occurs only here and in Psalm 43”. He gave its meaning as “to bow one's self very low, to sit down upon the ground like a mourner”.
The same verb stands in Psalm 42:6, where the Berean text renders it “my soul despairs within me”.
The Proud Brought Low
Isaiah uses the verb of God's judgment on human pride.
Isaiah sets the verb four times in his second and fifth chapters, in Isaiah 2:9, Isaiah 2:11, Isaiah 2:17 and Isaiah 5:15.
So mankind will be brought low, and each man humbled; the arrogant will lower their eyes.The verse stands here because Isaiah repeats in it the judgment he first pronounced in Isaiah 2:9.
Isaiah also uses it for the lofty city laid low and cast into the dust (Isaiah 26:5), and for Zion's oppressors, whose sons “will come and bow down to you” (Isaiah 60:14).
Perplexed, and Utterly at a Loss
The King James Version renders aporeo “doubt” and “perplexed”, and exaporeomai “despair”.
Strong's glosses aporeo “to have no way out, i.e. be at a loss (mentally)”, and exaporeomai “to be utterly at a loss, i.e. despond”.
Aporeo describes Herod, who was “greatly perplexed” by John the Baptist (Mark 6:20), and the disciples at the supper, “perplexed as to which of them He meant” (John 13:22).
In 2 Corinthians 4:8 Paul writes aporeo first and exaporeomai after it, in the Berean words “perplexed, but not in despair”.
Words That Only Look Alike
The STEP Bible lexicon lists shachach, shakach and shachaq as three separate verbs.
In English letters shachach looks like shakach, to forget, and like shachaq, to beat. Their Hebrew spellings, שָׁחַח, שָׁכַח and שָׁחַק, differ in the second or the third letter.
Psalm 42 holds the first two, shachach in its refrain at Psalm 42:5 and shakach in Psalm 42:9, “Why have You forgotten me?”
Ya'ash and Apelpizo
Ya'ash stands six times in the Old Testament and apelpizo once in the New.
Strong's glosses ya'ash “to desist, i.e. (figuratively) to despond”. Job calls his own words “my cry of despair” (Job 6:26), and in Jeremiah the people say “It is hopeless” and follow their own plans (Jeremiah 18:12).
The Abbott-Smith lexicon gives apelpizo two senses: “to give up in despair, despair of” and “to hope to receive from or in return”. It places Luke 6:35 under the second.
Bowed Down and Still Kept
Paul sets perplexity beside three more hardships in 2 Corinthians 4:8 to 9.
2 Corinthians 4:9 gives the last two hardships with their answers, “persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Paul gives the reason in 2 Corinthians 4:7, “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.”
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, the tagged texts (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG lexicons (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, with the glosses of James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890), and for G560 the senses of G. Abbott-Smith's Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922)
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1871), on Psalm 42:5.
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