Bible word study

Choshek (Strong’s H2822): Meaning in the Bible

Choshek (חֹשֶׁךְ) is the Hebrew word numbered H2822 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as the dark; hence (literally) darkness; figuratively, misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness. In the King James Bible it is translated dark(-ness), night, obscurity..

• Original wordחֹשֶׁךְ
• Transliterationchôshek
• Pronunciationkho-shek'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH2822
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H2821;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Choshek appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Choshek (H2822) stands behind 80 English renderings in 77 verses across 18 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Job (23), Isaiah (14), Psalms (11).

How the King James Bible renders Choshek, by count

• darkness70 of 80 (88 percent)
• dark7 of 80 (9 percent)
• obscurity2 of 80 (2 percent)
• night1 of 80 (1 percent)

Three places to read Choshek

• Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
• Job 19:8 He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths.
• Ecclesiastes 5:17 All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Choshek in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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