בְּלִיַּ֫עַל
worthlessness
‘worthlessness’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1100 appears — 26 distinct verses across 10 books. 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.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 13:13 בְלִיַּ֨עַל֙ n c ms Certain base fellows are gone out from the midst of you, and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known;
- Deuteronomy 15:9 בְלִיַּ֜עַל n c ms Beware that there not be a base thought in your heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing; and he cry to Yahweh against you, and it be sin to you.
Judges 2 verses
- Judges 19:22 בְלִיַּ֗עַל n c ms As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain base fellows, beset the house round about, beating at the door; and they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man who came into your house, that we may know him.
- Judges 20:13 בְלִיַּ֜עַל n c ms Now therefore deliver up the men, the base fellows, who are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel. But Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brothers the children of Israel.
1 Samuel 6 verses
- 1 Samuel 1:16 בְּלִיָּ֑עַל n c ms Don't count your handmaid for a wicked woman; for out of the abundance of my complaint and my provocation have I spoken hitherto.
- 1 Samuel 2:12 בְלִיָּ֑עַל n c ms Now the sons of Eli were base men; they didn't know Yahweh.
- 1 Samuel 10:27 בְלִיַּ֣עַל n c ms But certain worthless fellows said, How shall this man save us? They despised him, and brought him no present. But he held his peace.
- 1 Samuel 25:17 בְּלִיַּ֔עַל n c ms Now therefore know and consider what you will do; for evil is determined against our master, and against all his house: for he is such a worthless fellow that one can't speak to him.
- 1 Samuel 25:25 הַ/בְּלִיַּ֨עַל ptcl def.art + n c ms Please don't let my lord regard this worthless fellow, even Nabal; for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him: but I your handmaid didn't see the young men of my lord, whom you did send.
- 1 Samuel 30:22 וּ/בְלִיַּ֗עַל conj + n c ms Then answered all the wicked men and base fellows, of those who went with David, and said, Because they didn't go with us, we will not give them anything of the spoil that we have recovered, except to every man his wife and his children, that he may lead them away, and depart.
2 Samuel 4 verses
- 2 Samuel 16:7 הַ/בְּלִיָּֽעַל ptcl def.art + n c ms Thus said Shimei when he cursed, Be gone, be gone, you man of blood, and base fellow:
- 2 Samuel 20:1 בְּלִיַּ֗עַל n c ms There happened to be there a base fellow, whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: and he blew the trumpet, and said, We have no portion in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, Israel.
- 2 Samuel 22:5 בְלִיַּ֖עַל n c ms For the waves of death compassed me; The floods of ungodliness made me afraid:
- 2 Samuel 23:6 וּ/בְלִיַּ֕עַל conj + n c ms But the ungodly shall be all of them as thorns to be thrust away, Because they can't be taken with the hand
1 Kings 2 verses
- 1 Kings 21:10 בְלִיַּעַל֮ n c ms and set two men, base fellows, before him, and let them testify against him, saying, You did curse God and the king. Then carry him out, and stone him to death.
- 1 Kings 21:13 בְלִיַּעַל֮ הַ/בְּלִיַּ֜עַל n c ms ptcl def.art + n c ms The two men, the base fellows, came in and sat before him: and the base fellows bore witness against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did curse God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him to death with stones.
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 18:4 בְלִיַּ֣עַל n c ms The cords of death surrounded me. The floods of ungodliness made me afraid.
- Psalms 41:8 בְּ֭לִיַּעַל n c ms "An evil disease," they say, "has afflicted him. Now that he lies he shall rise up no more."
- Psalms 101:3 בְּלִ֫יָּ֥עַל n c ms I will set no vile thing before my eyes. I hate the deeds of faithless men. They will not cling to me.
Proverbs 3 verses
- Proverbs 6:12 בְּ֭לִיַּעַל n c ms A worthless person, a man of iniquity, Is he who walks with a perverse mouth;
- Proverbs 16:27 בְּ֭לִיַּעַל n c ms A worthless man devises mischief. His speech is like a scorching fire.
- Proverbs 19:28 בְּ֭לִיַּעַל n c ms A corrupt witness mocks justice, And the mouth of the wicked gulps down iniquity.
Nahum 2 verses
- Nahum 1:11 בְּלִיָּֽעַל n c ms There is one gone forth out of you, who devises evil against Yahweh, who counsels wickedness.
- Nahum 1:15 בְּלִיַּ֖עַל n c ms Behold, on the mountains the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace! Keep your feasts, Judah! Perform your vows, for the wicked one will no more pass through you. He is utterly cut off.
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.
“worthlessness” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun בליעל (bᵉlîyaʻal). Translators differ — “belial” in the King James Version, then “wickedness” (unfoldingWord Literal Text), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 26 verses in 10 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. First canonically at Deuteronomy 13:13, it enters the text early. Its meaning spans more than one sense — see its full sense range. See the sense tree, 26-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1100 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 →
- 26
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 26 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,226
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,226 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 26 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 26 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 16 verses · 62%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 31%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 8%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Belial 14×, Wicked 4×, Ungodly 2×
- American Standard Version†: Base 9×, Worthless 4×, Floods of ungodliness 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Wicked 7×, Worthless 5×, Chaos 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Wickedness 18×, Wicked 4×, Worthlessness 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1100 across 27† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1100 across 28† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1100 across 27† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1100 across 27† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 3 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. abstr. אִישׁ (ה)בליעל, אַנְשֵׁי הבליעל, worthless, good-for-nothing, base fellows 1 S 25:25; 2 S 16:7; 20:1; 1 K 21:13; Pr 16:27; = בֶּן־ב׳ 1 S 25:17, בְּנֵי ב׳ Dt 13:14; Ju 19:22; 20:13; 1 S 2:12; 10:27; 1 K 21:10, 13; 2 Ch 13:7; בַּת ב׳ 1 S 1:16 (drunken woman); עֵד ב׳ base witness Pr 19:28; דְּבַר ב׳ base, wicked thing ψ 41:9 (yet cf. 3 infr.), 101:3 (add prob. also 1 S 29:10, so 𝔊 We Dr); דָּבָר … ב׳ (elliptical and in apposition) Dt 15:9. e.g. 1 Samuel 25:25
- 2. concr. elliptical of אישׁ ב׳ 2 S 23:6 Jb 34:18; כָּל־אִישׁ רַע וּבְלִיַּעַל 1 S 30:22; אָדָם בְּלִיַּעַל Pr 6:12. e.g. 2 Samuel 23:6
- 3. ruin, destruction: so ψ 41:9 according to De Che al., but v. supr.; יֹעֵץ ב׳ counsellor of ruin Na 1:11; ב׳ alone a man of ruin, destroyer Na 2:1; נַחֲלֵי ב׳ floods of destruction (‖ שְׁאוֹל) 2 S 22:5 = ψ 18:5. e.g. Psalms 41:9
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
n.[m.] worthlessness (cpd. בְּלִי not, without and יַעַל worth, use, profit)—בּ׳ Dt 13:14 + 20 times; בְּלִיָּ֑עַל ψ 101:3 + 5 times;—the quality of being useless, good for nothing.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from בלי (bᵉlîy) (H1097) — without.
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.
בְּלִיַּעַל
- (b. h.) availing nothing, wickedness. Snh. 111ᵇ (playing on עוֹל) בני ב׳ means בנים … עול וכ׳ sons who shook off the yoke &c.
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 20 distinct written forms H1100 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ֭לִיַּעַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 6:12 | 4 |
| בְלִיַּ֜עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 15:9 | 2 |
| בְלִיַּ֣עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 10:27 | 2 |
| בְלִיַּעַל֮ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 21:10 | 2 |
| בְּלִיָּ֑עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 1:16 | 2 |
| בְלִיַּ֔עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 13:7 | 1 |
| בְלִיַּ֖עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 22:5 | 1 |
| בְלִיַּ֗עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 19:22 | 1 |
| בְלִיַּ֨עַל֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 13:13 | 1 |
| בְלִיָּ֑עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 2:12 | 1 |
| בְּלִ֫יָּ֥עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 101:3 | 1 |
| בְּלִיַּ֔עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 25:17 | 1 |
| בְּלִיַּ֖עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Nahum 1:15 | 1 |
| בְּלִיַּ֗עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 20:1 | 1 |
| בְּלִיָּֽעַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Nahum 1:11 | 1 |
| הַ/בְּלִיַּ֜עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 21:13 | 1 |
| הַ/בְּלִיַּ֨עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 25:25 | 1 |
| הַ/בְּלִיָּֽעַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 16:7 | 1 |
| וּ/בְלִיַּ֕עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 23:6 | 1 |
| וּ/בְלִיַּ֗עַל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 30:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1100, 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
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 → 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 25 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 26 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
- Deuteronomy 13:13
- Judges 19:22
- 1 Samuel 1:16
- 2 Samuel 16:7
- 1 Kings 21:10
- 2 Chronicles 13:7
- Job 34:18
- Psalms 18:4
- Proverbs 6:12
- Nahum 1:11
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.
