Sense: to serve (servanthood)
v. — to work for or be a servant to; usually of a lower status person.
Now I have given all these lands into the hand of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him even the wild animals of the field to serve [עבד] him.
Jeremiah 27:6 (NRSV)
The Bible Sense Lexicon can help us find central passages about a concept, as the passage containing today’s example verse demonstrates. If we look at the BSL concordance entry, we find that it does not list Jeremiah 27:6 individually. Rather, it lists Jeremiah 27:6–9 with a dash. The dash indicates that this sense occurs in every verse from Jeremiah 27:6 to Jeremiah 27:9. We also find a listing for Jeremiah 27:11–14 and verse 17 separately. If we do the math, we can glean from this that there are no fewer than nine occurrences of this sense in this chapter of the Bible. If we want to learn about serving in the Old Testament—at least in a secular sense (there is a separate sense for religious service)—then we may want to check out Jeremiah 27. Consider giving this a try to find important passages about other concepts.
What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?
Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.
The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.
Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.