בַּל
not
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Particle
- A short function word — article, negation, interrogative, the sign of the direct object, and the like.
Every verse where H1077 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 14 distinct verses. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Isaiah
- Isaiah 14:21 בַּל ptcl neg Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers, that they not rise up, and possess the earth, and fill the surface of the world with cities.
- Isaiah 26:10 בַּל וּ/בַל ptcl neg conj + ptcl neg Let favor be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness will he deal wrongfully, and will not see the majesty of Yahweh.
- Isaiah 26:11 בַּל ptcl neg Yahweh, your hand is lifted up, yet they don't see: but they shall see [your] zeal for the people, and be disappointed; yes, fire shall devour your adversaries.
- Isaiah 26:14 בַּל בַּל ptcl neg ptcl neg [They are] dead, they shall not live; [they are] deceased, they shall not rise: therefore have you visited and destroyed them, and made all memory of them to perish.
- Isaiah 26:18 בַּל וּ/בַֽל ptcl neg conj + ptcl neg We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not worked any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
- Isaiah 33:20 בַּל בַּל בַּל ptcl neg ptcl neg ptcl neg Look on Zion, the city of our solemnities: your eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tent that shall not be removed, the stakes of it shall never be plucked up, neither shall any of the cords of it be broken.
- Isaiah 33:21 בַּל ptcl neg But there Yahweh will be with us in majesty, a place of broad rivers and streams, in which shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.
- Isaiah 33:23 בַּל בַּל ptcl neg ptcl neg Your rigging is untied; they could not strengthen the foot of their mast, they could not spread the sail: then was the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame took the prey.
- Isaiah 33:24 וּ/בַל conj + ptcl neg The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people who dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity.
- Isaiah 35:9 בַּֽל ptcl neg No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous animal go up thereon; they shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk [there]:
- Isaiah 40:24 בַּל בַּל בַּל ptcl neg ptcl neg ptcl neg Yes, they have not been planted; yes, they have not been sown; yes, their stock has not taken root in the earth: moreover he blows on them, and they wither, and the whirlwind takes them away as stubble.
- Isaiah 43:17 בַּל ptcl neg who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the mighty man (they lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinct, they are quenched as a wick):
- Isaiah 44:8 בַּל ptcl neg Don't fear, neither be afraid: haven't I declared to you of old, and shown it? You are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is not. I don't know any Rock.
- Isaiah 44:9 בַּל בַּל וּ/בַל ptcl neg ptcl neg conj + ptcl neg Those who fashion an engraved image are all of them vanity; and the things that they delight in shall not profit; and their own witnesses don't see, nor know: that they may be disappointed.
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“not” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb בל (bal). More than half of its appearances fall in Psalms. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 58 verses — moderately common. Its earliest occurrence is 1 Chronicles 16:30. Related forms include בלה, בלא and בלה. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1077 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 58
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 58 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #550
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 550 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 58 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 58 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 42 verses · 72%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 16 verses · 28%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: And 1×, Lest 1×, Neither 1×
- American Standard Version: And 1×, In 1×, Neither 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: No 6×, Cannot 5×, Never 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Not 57×, And 9×, Cannot 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1077 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1077 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1077 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 25 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 8 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1077 across 83 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- not, hardly, else
Word origin
Derived from בלה (bâlâh) (H1086) — to wear out.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
בַּל
- , v. Ges. H. Dict. s. v.) not, frequ. used, in connection with a verb, in the sense of a prohibitive law. Erub. 100ᵃ עובר על בל תגרע he transgresses the law which says ‘thou shalt not diminish therefrom’ (Deut. XIII, 1). Pes. III, 3 שמוזהרים עליו בבל יראה וכ׳ concerning which we are cautioned by the law prohibiting leavened things to be seen or to be found (Ex. XIII, 7; XII, 19); a. v. fr. [Our w. is also applied to Bible texts in which לֹא appears.] e.g. Deuteronomy 13:1
בֵּל
- Bel, the Babylonian deity. Ab. Zar. 11ᵇ בית ב׳ בבבל the temple of Bel in Babylon.
*בָּל
- (contr. of בהל, cmp. בָּאלֵי) care, anxiety. Dan. VI, 15. e.g. Daniel 6:15
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms H1077 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| בַּל | Particle, Negative | 1 Chronicles 16:30 | 56 |
| וּ/בַל | Particle, Negative | Hosea 7:2 | 7 |
| בַל | Particle, Negative | Proverbs 23:35 | 3 |
| בַּֽל | Particle, Negative | Isaiah 35:9 | 2 |
| בַֽל | Particle, Negative | Hosea 9:16 | 1 |
| בַּ֝֗ל | Particle, Negative | Psalms 32:9 | 1 |
| וּ/בַֽל | Particle, Negative | Isaiah 26:18 | 1 |
| וּֽ/בַל | Particle, Negative | Psalms 16:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1077, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- בלא bᵉlâʼ H1080 to wear out
- בלה bâleh H1087 worn out
- בלו bᵉlôw H1093 tribute
- בלוא bᵉlôwʼ H1094 rags
- בלי bᵉlîy H1097 without
- בלתי biltîy H1115 except
- תבלית tablîyth H8399 destruction
Derived from this word
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 51 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 58 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
