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בִּלְתִּי

except

‘except’ is one of 7 main senses fuller range ↓

H1115 Strong's Hebrew
biltîy Transliteration
/bil-tee'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 112 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

בלתי — transliterated biltîy — is a Hebrew word carrying the sense “except.” BDB distinguishes 7 senses for it. Spanning 107 verses in 21 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 3:11. Sharing its root, it stands alongside בלה, בל and בלא. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
because un
Modern gloss
except
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H1115 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 →

107
distinct verses
The word appears in 107 distinct verses.
21 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 21 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 3:11
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 3:11.
Amos 3:4
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Amos 3:4.
#387
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 387 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 107 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 28 · 26%
  • Historical 30 · 28%
  • Wisdom 2 · 2%
  • Prophets 47 · 44%

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 107 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 70 verses · 65%
  • Torah (Pentateuch) 28 verses · 26%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 9 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).

  • King James Version: No 3×, Not 3×, Except 2×
  • American Standard Version: No 3×, Except 2×, Lest 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Not 16×, No 12×, Nothing 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Not 50×, That 10×, Except 6×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H1115 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “No” 3×
  • “Not” 3×
  • “Except” 2×
  • “Lest” 2×
  • “Nothing” 2×
  • “Without” 2×

Plus 16 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 H1115 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “No” 3×
  • “Except” 2×
  • “Lest” 2×
  • “Not” 2×
  • “Nothing” 2×

Plus 19 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 H1115 across 104 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Not” 16×
  • “No” 12×
  • “Nothing” 4×
  • “Without” 4×
  • “Would not” 4×
  • “From” 3×
  • “Refusing” 3×
  • “Again unless” 2×
  • “Except” 2×
  • “I would not” 2×
  • “One” 2×
  • “They would not” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 46 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 4 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H1115 across 113 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Not” 50×
  • “That” 10×
  • “Except” 6×
  • “To” 6×
  • “No” 4×
  • “Sake” 3×
  • “Unless” 3×
  • “Without” 3×
  • “Failing” 2×
  • “From” 2×
  • “I” 2×
  • “Nothing” 2×

Plus 20 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


7 senses in BDB, in lexicon order

The 7 senses 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.

  1. not, except (substantive)
  2. not (adverb)
  3. except (after preceding negation) (adverb)
  4. except (after an implied or expressed negation) (conjunction)
  5. so as not, in order not (with preposition)
  6. an account of not, because...not (with preposition)
  7. until not (with preposition)

Word origin

Derived from בלה (bâlâh) (H1086) — to wear out.

TWOT: 246i


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.

בַּלְתִּי

  • Beth-Baltin &c., v. בִּירָם. R. Hash. II, 4 (22ᵇ; Ms. M. בילתי, בלתי; v. Rabb. D. S. c. l. note). Ib. 23ᵃ bot. מאי בית ב׳ (Ms. M. 1 בילתי, 2 בלחי, Ms. L. בילתין) what is B. B.? Answ. בירם.

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 28 distinct written forms H1115 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
לְ/בִלְתִּ֖י Conjunction Daniel 9:11 19
לְ/בִלְתִּ֥י Conjunction Exodus 8:22 15
בִּלְתִּ֥י Conjunction Daniel 11:18 12
לְ/בִלְתִּ֤י Conjunction Deuteronomy 4:21 8
לְ/בִלְתִּ֣י Conjunction Ezekiel 22:30 7
לְ/בִלְתִּ֛י Conjunction Genesis 19:21 6
בִּלְתִּ֖י Conjunction Amos 3:3 5
לְ/בִלְתִּי Conjunction Ezekiel 13:22 5
לְ/בִלְתִּ֨י Conjunction Deuteronomy 8:11 4
וּ/לְ/בִלְתִּ֛י Preposition Jeremiah 33:20 3
לְ/בִלְתִּ֗י Conjunction 1 Kings 15:17 3
לְ/בִלְתִּ֧י Conjunction 2 Samuel 14:7 3
לְ/בִלְתִּי֙ Conjunction Deuteronomy 12:23 3
בִּלְתִּ֣י Conjunction Isaiah 14:6 2
וּ/לְ/בִלְתִּ֥י Particle, Negative Ezekiel 13:3 2
לְ/בִ֨לְתִּי Conjunction 1 Kings 11:10 2
לְ/בִלְתִּ֞י Conjunction Job 42:8 2
בִּלְתִּ֗י Conjunction Judges 7:14 1
בִּלְתִּ֞י Conjunction Numbers 32:12 1
בִּלְתִּ֤י Conjunction Isaiah 10:4 1
בִּלְתִּֽ/י Preposition Hosea 13:4 1
בִּלְתֶּ֑/ךָ Conjunction 1 Samuel 2:2 1
וּ/לְ/בִלְתִּ֖י Particle, Negative Jeremiah 17:23 1
וּ/לְ/בִלְתִּ֣י Particle, Negative Jeremiah 17:27 1
וּ/לְ/בִלְתִּי Conjunction Deuteronomy 4:21 1
לְ/בִלְתִּי֩ Conjunction Ezekiel 20:15 1
מִ/בִּלְתִּ֖י Particle, Negative Ezekiel 16:28 1
מִ/בִּלְתִּ֞י Particle, Negative Numbers 14:16 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1115, 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

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 104 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 107 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.