בַּעֲלָה
Baalah
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Baalah’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H1173 appears — 5 distinct verses across 2 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.
Joshua 4 verses
- Joshua 15:9 בַּעֲלָ֔ה n Proper and the border extended from the top of the mountain to the spring of the waters of Nephtoah, and went out to the cities of Mount Ephron; and the border extended to Baalah (the same is Kiriath Jearim);
- Joshua 15:10 מִ/בַּעֲלָ֥ה prep + n Proper and the border turned about from Baalah westward to Mount Seir, and passed along to the side of Mount Jearim on the north (the same is Chesalon), and went down to Beth-shemesh, and passed along by Timnah;
- Joshua 15:11 הַֽ/בַּעֲלָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n Proper and the border went out to the side of Ekron northward; and the border extended to Shikkeron, and passed along to Mount Baalah, and went out at Jabneel; and the goings out of the border were at the sea.
- Joshua 15:29 בַּעֲלָ֥ה n Proper Baalah, and Iim, and Ezem,
1 Chronicles 1 verse
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.
The Hebrew name בעלה centers on the idea of “Baalah.” It is rare — just 5 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Joshua dominates its distribution — 4 of 5 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Joshua 15:9. For the data behind this summary, explore 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1173 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Joshua 4 verses 80%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 20%
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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 80%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 20%
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: Baalah 5×
- American Standard Version: Baalah 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Baalah 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Baalah 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1173 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1173 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1173 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H1173 across 5 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 2 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. mistress, בַּעֲלַת הַבַּיִת mistress of the house 1 K 17:17. e.g. 1 Kings 17:17
- 2. n. rel. ב׳ אוב necromancer 1 S 28:7(×2); ב׳ כשׁפים sorceress, Na 3:4. e.g. 1 Samuel 28:7
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.pr.loc. Jos 15:9, 10, 11, 29 1 Ch 13:6 = קִרְיַת בַּעַל Jos 15:60; 18:14 (city of Baal, from a high place of Baal there) = בַּעֲלֵי יְהוּדָה 2 S 6:2 (We Dr read בעל; י added by dittogr.; so-called as seat of Baal-worship in Judah, in distinct. from like places elsewhere) = קִרְיַת יְעָרִים Jos 9:17 v. 15:9 1 Ch 13:6; a city of Judah;? Kirjat elʿEnab RobBR ii. 11 TristrTpg..
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from בעלה (baʻălâh) (H1172) — mistress.
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.
בַּעֲלָה
- (preced.) mistress, owner &c. Gen. R. s. 52 (rendering בְּעֻלַת, Gen. XX, 3, as though בּעֲלַת) מרתא דבעלה her husband’s mistress.—Compounds are mostly self-evident, e.g. בעלת הגט the woman receiving the letter of divorce;—ב׳ איברים an animal of large build. Ber. 32ᵃ; v. בַּעַל. e.g. Genesis 20:3
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 5 distinct written forms H1173 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בַּעֲלָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:9 | 1 |
| בַּעֲלָ֔תָ/ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 13:6 | 1 |
| בַּעֲלָ֥ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:29 | 1 |
| הַֽ/בַּעֲלָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:11 | 1 |
| מִ/בַּעֲלָ֥ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:10 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1173, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- בעלות Bᵉʻâlôwth H1175 Baalath
- בעלת Baʻălâth H1191 Baalath
- בעלת באר Baʻălath Bᵉʼêr H1192 Baalath-beer
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Baalah). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Mistress; city. (1.) A city in the south of Judah (Josh. 15:29), elsewhere called Balah (Josh. 19:3) and Bilhah (1 Chr. 4:29). Now Khurbet Zebalah.
(2.) A city on the northern border of the tribe of Judah (Josh. 15:10), called also Kirjath-jearim, q.v. (15:9; 1 Chr. 13:6), now Kuriet-el-Enab, or as some think, Erma.
(3.) A mountain on the north-western boundary of Judah and Dan (Josh. 15:11).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
[Baal, NO. 2]
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
her idol; she that is governed or subdued; a spouse
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
