Despair
מַסָּהStrong’s H4531massah (mas-sah)
Appears in 4 verses of the Old Testament
In short
Massah is the Hebrew word usually translated “trials” and “despair of”. It appears in 4 verses of the Old Testament.
“Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?”
Meaning
- Despair
- Testing, proving, trial
How it's translated
- the trials 2
- by trials 1
- despair of 1
Word-by-word English from the STEPBible tagged text.
Where it's used most
- Deuteronomy 3
- Job 1
2 books in all.
Explore in Scripture
- Deuteronomy 7:19The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.
- Deuteronomy 29:3The great temptations which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles:
- Job 9:23If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
Hebrew dictionary
מַסָּה massah · despair
despair
מַסָּה massah · trial
testing, proving, trial
From STEPBible’s Hebrew lexicon (based on Brown-Driver-Briggs).
Webster's 1828 Dictionary
How the English word “despair” was understood when the King James Version was still the common Bible of English readers.
DESPAIR, noun
- Hopelessness; a hopeless state; a destitution of hope or expectation.“We are perplexed, but not in despair” 2 Corinthians 4:8
- That which causes despair; that of which there is no hope.
- Loss of hope in the mercy of God.
All definitions and other forms of “despair”
DESPAIR, verb intransitive
[Latin To hope.]
To be without hope; to hive up all hope or expectation; followed by of.
- “We despaired even of life” 2 Corinthians 1:8
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Verse references are checked against the KJV. Read the full entry.
Verses are from the King James Version. Word meanings come from the original Hebrew, not from any one translation.