2 Samuel 5:7

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion; the same is the city of David.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

1 first appearance in the Hebrew Bible

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מְצֻדַ֣ת

mâtsûwd

H4686

“net of”

Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct

Appears 23× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at 1 Samuel 22:4

Full BDB Definition

Origin: for H4685

TWOT: 1885g , 1885i

net, prey, net prey - net - prey - fastness, stronghold

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

8: words
7: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is מְצֻדַ֣ת net H4686 — appearing just 23 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

First appearance in Scripture

This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

צִיּ֑וֹן Zion H6726

Shared distinctive vocabulary

מְצֻדַ֣ת net H4686 occurs in 23 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

1 verb
5 nouns
1 pronoun
1 particle

Verb forms

וַיִּלְכֹּ֣ד Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

דָּוִ֔ד David H1732 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 14 words from the Hebrew and 14 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 8 Hebrew tokens and 11 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 2 Samuel 5:7 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

1 Kings 2:10 David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David.
2 Samuel 6:12 It was told king David, saying, Yahweh has blessed the house of Obed-edom, and all that pertains to him, because of the ark of God. David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom into the city of David with joy.
2 Samuel 6:16 It was so, as the ark of Yahweh came into the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looked out at the window, and saw king David leaping and dancing before Yahweh; and she despised him in her heart.
2 Samuel 5:9 David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. David built round about from Millo and inward.
2 Samuel 6:10 So David would not remove the ark of Yahweh to him into the city of David; but David carried it aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite.
1 Kings 3:1 Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of Yahweh, and the wall of Jerusalem round about.
1 Kings 8:1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the princes of the fathers' [houses] of the children of Israel, to king Solomon in Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is Zion.
1 Chronicles 11:7 David lived in the stronghold; therefore they called it the city of David.

2 Chronicles 5:2 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the princes of the fathers' [houses] of the children of Israel, to Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the covenant of Yahweh out of the city of David, which is Zion.
2 Chronicles 24:16 They buried him in the city of David among the kings, because he had done good in Israel, and toward God and his house.
Psalms 2:6 "Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion."
Psalms 9:11 Sing praises to Yahweh, who dwells in Zion, And declare among the people what he has done.
Psalms 48:12 Walk about Zion, and go around her. Number its towers;
Psalms 51:18 Do well in your good pleasure to Zion. Build the walls of Jerusalem.
Psalms 87:2 Yahweh loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Psalms 132:13 For Yahweh has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his habitation.

Isaiah 12:6 Cry aloud and shout, you inhabitant of Zion; for great in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel!"
Isaiah 59:20 A Redeemer will come to Zion, and to those who turn from disobedience in Jacob, says Yahweh.
Micah 4:2 Many nations will go and say, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, And to the house of the God of Jacob; And he will teach us of his ways, And we will walk in his paths." For out of Zion will go forth the law, And the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem;
Romans 9:33 even as it is written, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense; And no one who believes in him will be disappointed."
Hebrews 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels,
Revelation 14:1 I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him a number, one hundred forty-four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew 2 Samuel 5:7 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיִּלְכֹּ֣ד דָּוִ֔ד אֵ֖ת מְצֻדַ֣ת צִיּ֑וֹן הִ֖יא עִ֥יר דָּוִֽד

Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion; the same is the city of David.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 2 Samuel 5:7 Septuagint · lemma form

καί καταλαμβάνω δαυίδ ὁ περιοχή σιων οὗτος ὁ πόλις ὁ δαυίδ

And David took first the hold of Sion: this is the city of David.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וַאֲחַד דָוִד יַת חַקְרָא דְצִיוֹן הִיא קַרְתָּא דְדָוִד:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on 2 Samuel 5:7 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

2Sa 5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same [is] the city of David.

Ver. 7. Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion.] And the rather for their carnal confidence which God had rejected, and David soon after confuted; wherein also he became a lively type of Christ, perfectly triumphing over all our enemies, and treading Satan under our feet. {Rom 16:20}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

5:7 the fortress of Zion: At this time Jerusalem was probably a small site of nine to twelve square acres. The Jebusites’ arrogance, and the fact that the city had not been conquered previously, suggests that it was well fortified.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

the stronghold of Zion--Whether Zion be the southwestern hill commonly so-called, or the peak now level on the north of the temple mount, it is the towering height which catches the eye from every quarter--"the hill fort," "the rocky hold" of Jerusalem.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

7. Nevertheless] Heb. simply, And.

the strong hold of Zion] See Additional Note VI. p. 239.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Nevertheless, David took the strong hold of Zion,.... A fortress without the city, and separate from it, and which was very strong; and the taking it might facilitate the taking of the city, which yet as appears by what follows, was very difficult to do:

the same is the city of David; it was afterwards so called, where he built an house, and dwelt.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The stronghold of Zion - Or castle 1Ch 11:5, 1Ch 11:7. The ancient Zion was the hill on which the temple stood, and the castle seems to have been immediately to the north of the temple. The modern Zion lies to the southwest of the temple.

The same is the city of David - The name afterward given to it 2Sa 5:9, and by which it was known in the writer’s time.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Castle: "the lower city," (Josephus) spread over Mount Sion.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

The strong hold of Zion; either,

1. A very strong fort which fitly had built upon Mount Zion; which being taken, the city quickly yielded. Or,

2. The city of Zion, which was very strongly fortified.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

The stronghold of Zion: the same is the city of David. Zion was the hill on the southwestern side of the city; but we learn from ver. 9 that the Jebusites had not occupied the whole of it, but a part only, which was their stronghold, round which there would be scattered dwellings, as the whole tribe dwelt there. The total area of the hill top was about sixty acres, and it was now quickly covered with houses, and called "the city of David," after its captor. The view of Dr. Birch and others, that the stronghold of Zion was Ophel, is rendered untenable by the fact that this southern tongue of Mount Moriah is completely commanded by other parts of the hill. According to Gesenius, Zion means "sunny;" others render it "the dry hill;" others, "lofty;" and Furst, "the castle." None of these derivations is of any real value, as the word is probably Hittite.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

2 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mâtsûwd (“net”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word mâtsûwd carries the sense “net.” How does it shape the verse?
This is the first place “Zion” appears in Scripture (first appears here). What does its debut here establish?
How does 1 Samuel 22:4, which shares the word «net», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “David” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וַיִּלְכֹּ֣ד» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

1 word makes its first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 11 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 7 words in this verse.
“David” occurs 2× in this single verse.
7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.