אָדָם
man
‘man’ is one of 5 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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H120 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 27 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 2:9 אָדָ֖ם n c ms Man is brought low, And mankind is humbled; Therefore don't forgive them.
- Isaiah 2:11 אָדָם֙ n c ms The lofty looks of man will be brought low, The haughtiness of men will be bowed down, And Yahweh alone will be exalted in that day.
- Isaiah 2:17 הָ/אָדָ֔ם ptcl def.art + n c ms The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low; And Yahweh alone shall be exalted in that day.
- Isaiah 2:20 הָ/אָדָ֔ם ptcl def.art + n c ms In that day, men shall cast away their idols of silver, And their idols of gold, Which have been made for themselves to worship, To the moles and to the bats;
- Isaiah 2:22 הָ֣/אָדָ֔ם ptcl def.art + n c ms Stop trusting in man, whose breath is in his nostrils; For of what account is he?
- Isaiah 5:15 אָדָ֖ם n c ms So man is brought low, Mankind is humbled, And the eyes of the arrogant ones are humbled;
- Isaiah 6:11 אָדָ֔ם n c ms Then I said, "Lord, how long?" He answered, "Until cities are waste without inhabitant, And houses without man, And the land becomes utterly waste,
- Isaiah 6:12 הָ/אָדָ֑ם ptcl def.art + n c ms And Yahweh has removed men far away, And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
- Isaiah 13:12 וְ/אָדָ֖ם conj + n c ms I will make a man more rare than fine gold, even a man than the pure gold of Ophir.
- Isaiah 17:7 הָ/אָדָ֖ם ptcl def.art + n c ms In that day shall men look to their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
- Isaiah 22:6 אָדָ֖ם n c ms Elam bore the quiver, with chariots of men [and] horsemen; and Kir uncovered the shield.
- Isaiah 29:19 אָדָ֔ם n c ms The humble also shall increase their joy in Yahweh, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
- Isaiah 29:21 אָדָם֙ n c ms that make a man an offender in [his] cause, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and turn aside the just with a thing of nothing.
- Isaiah 31:3 אָדָם֙ n c ms Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit: and when Yahweh shall stretch out his hand, both he who helps shall stumble, and he who is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together.
- Isaiah 31:8 אָדָ֖ם n c ms The Assyrian shall fall by the sword, not of man; and the sword, not of men, shall devour him; and he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall become subject to forced labor.
- Isaiah 37:19 אָדָ֛ם n c ms and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them.
- Isaiah 38:11 אָדָ֛ם n c ms I said, I shall not see Yah, Yah in the land of the living: I shall see man no more with the inhabitants of the world.
- Isaiah 43:4 אָדָם֙ n c ms Since you have been precious in my sight, [and] honorable, and I have loved you; therefore will I give men in your place, and peoples instead of your life.
- Isaiah 44:11 מֵֽ/אָדָ֑ם prep + n c ms Behold, all his fellows shall be disappointed; and the workmen, they are of men: let them all be gathered together, let them stand up; they shall fear, they shall be put to shame together.
- Isaiah 44:13 אָדָ֖ם n c ms The carpenter stretches out a line; he marks it out with a pencil; he shapes it with planes, and he marks it out with the compasses, and shapes it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house.
- Isaiah 44:15 לְ/אָדָם֙ prep + n c ms Then shall it be for a man to burn; and he takes of it, and warms himself; yes, he kindles it, and bakes bread: yes, he makes a god, and worships it; he makes it an engraved image, and falls down to it.
- Isaiah 45:12 וְ/אָדָ֖ם conj + n c ms I have made the earth, and created man on it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens; and all their host have I commanded.
- Isaiah 47:3 אָדָֽם n c ms Your nakedness shall be uncovered, yes, your shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and will spare no man.
- Isaiah 51:12 אָדָ֖ם n c ms I, even I, am he who comforts you: who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who shall be made as grass;
- Isaiah 52:14 אָדָֽם n c ms Like as many were astonished at you (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men),
- Isaiah 56:2 אָדָ֖ם n c ms Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast; who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil.
- Isaiah 58:5 אָדָ֖ם n c ms Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Yahweh?
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 noun אדם centers on the idea of “man.” Its meaning spans more than one sense — see its full sense range. Spanning 526 verses in 33 books, it ranks among the most common words of the Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel dominates its distribution — 130 of 526 verses. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 1:26. 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 H120 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 →
- 526
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 526 distinct verses.
- 33 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 33 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #91
- by frequency
- Top 100 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 91 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 526 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 526 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 238 verses · 45%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 193 verses · 37%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 95 verses · 18%
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: Man 297×, Men 73×, Man's 13×
- American Standard Version: Man 235×, Men 85×, Son of man 49×
- Berean Standard Bible: Man 280×, Men 70×, Mankind 20×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Man 364×, Humanity 35×, Mankind 30×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H120 across 545 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 73 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 7 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H120 across 545 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 79 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 H120 across 508 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 39 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H120 across 544 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 31 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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 4 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. a man (= Ger. Mensch) = human being Gn 2:5, 7(×2), 8, 15, 16, 18 +, 16:12 (27 textual J) Lv 5:4 (‖ נֶפֶשׁ) 13:2, 9 (19 textual P) Ne 2:10 Is 13:12 (‖ אֱנוֹשׁ); הָאָ׳ הַגָּדוֹל Jos 14:15 (E); אָ׳ בְּלִיַּעַל Pr 6:12 (‖ אִישׁ אָוֶן cf. 1 S 25:25 & v. בליעל); = any one Lv 1:2 Nu 9:6, 7 Jb 20:29; 27:13 Pr 15:20; 21:16, 20; 24:30 Ec 7:20 + oft. WisdLt, Je 2:6; 4:25 Ne 2:12, cf. נֶפֶשׁ א׳ Nu 19:11, 13 +; seld. man opp. woman Gn 2:22(×2), 23, 25; 3:8, 12, 17, 20, 21 Ec 7:28. e.g. Genesis 2:5
- 2. coll. man, mankind Gn 1:26; 9:5, 6(×3) + (P 28 textual) 6:1, 5, 6, 7 (JE 24 textual) Dt 4:32 (D 6 textual) (on 2 S 7:19 cf. 1 Ch 17:17 v. DrSm); distinctly = men + women Gn 1:27; 5:1 Nu 5:6; given as name Gn 5:2; but = warriors Is 22:6 רֶכֶב א׳ (‖ פּרשׁים); ‖ beasts (41 textual) בְּהֵמָה Gn 6:7; 7:23 (J?) Ex 8:13, 14; 9:9, 10 (P) 9:19, 22, 25; 12:12; 13:2, 13, 15 (all J) +; late proph. Je 21:6; 31:27; 50:3; 51:62 Ez 14:13, 17, 19, 21; 25:13; 29:8, 11; 32:13 (del. Co) 36:11 Jon 3:8 Zp 1:3 Hg 1:11 Zc 2:8; 8:10; ‖ בָּקָר Ez 4:15; ‖ צֹאן, חֲמֹרִים, ב׳ Nu 31:28; ‖ id. + מִכָּל־הַבְּהֵמָה v 30 cf. Jon 3:7; ‖ חַיָּה Gn 9:5 (P) cf. Ez 1:5, 8, 10, 26, & descript. of כְּרוּבִים Ez 10:8, 14, 21 cf. 41:19; ‖ trees Dt 20:19 (rd. הֶאָדָם v. Di); opp. God 1 S 15:29; 16:7(×2) Is 31:3 Ez 28:2, 9 1 Ch 21:13; 29:1 2 Ch 6:18 Mal 3:8 cf. Ex 33:20 Dt 5:21; so בֶּן־א׳ Nu 23:19 (‖ אישׁ Ez 2:1, 3, 6, 8 (87 textual Ez, alw. addressed to proph.); בְּנֵי הָא׳ 1 S 26:19; made in God’s image Gn 1:26, 27; 9:6 cf. Ec 7:29; as feeble, earthly, mortal Nu 16:29(×2) Ps 82:7; 144:3, 4 Jb 5:7; 14:1, 10 cf. 25:6 (בֶּן־א׳) Ec 12:5; as sinful 1 K 8:46 2 Ch 6:36 Je 10:14 cf. Nu 5:6 Jb 31:33 Ho 6:7; of men in general, other men (opp. to particular ones) Ju 16:17 (cf. אַחַד הָא׳ v 7, 11) 18:7, 28 ψ 73:5 Je 32:20 +; ‖ אִישׁ Is 2:9, 11, 17; 5:15 cf. Ez 23:42 (del. Co Vrss); בְּנֵי א׳ 2 S 7:14 (‖ אֲנָשִׁים) Pr 8:4 (‖ אִישִׁים); ψ 49:3; 62:10 (both ‖ בְּנֵי אִישׁ) = men of low opp. men of high degree—so oft. Ph. and = vassal Sab. DHMZMG 1875, 680 cf. 686; נֶפֶשׁ א׳ coll. Nu 31:35, 40, 46 1 Ch 5:21 Ez 27:13. e.g. Genesis 1:26
- 3. n.pr.m. Adam, first man (without art. cf. שָׂטָן 1 Ch 21:1 over ag. הַשּׂ׳ Jb 1:6 etc.) Gn 4:25 (J) 5:1, 3, 4, 5 (P) 1 Ch 1:1. (Gn 2:20; 3:17, 21 rd. לָא׳ v. Di) e.g. 1 Chronicles 21:1
- 4. n.pr.loc. city in Jordan valley (as built? Jos 3:16. e.g. Joshua 3:16
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. Gn 1:27 man, mankind (Ph. אדם, Sab. id., CISiv. 1, 1. 4 al.; cf. As. admu, young (of bird) DlW, but NöZMG 1886, 722 identif. with Ar. أَذَامٌ coll. creatures)—Sg. abs. exc. cstr. Pr 6:12 cf. Thes; (בְּנֵי (הָ)א׳ oft. = pl. of א׳ Gn 11:5 + 39 textual, cf. בְּנוֹת הָא׳ Gn 6:2, 4)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אדם (ʼâdam) (H119) — to be red.
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.
אֲדַם
- , v. הֲדַם. [v. Rabb. D. S. to Ab. Zar. 38ᵇ, Bets. 24ᵇ, note.]
אָדַם
- , v. דמם) [to be viscous, thick, dark] to be red, grow red.
- to redden, make red. Y. Sabb. VII, 10ᶜ top המְאַדֵּם אודם he who produces a red spot (congestion of blood, on a Sabbath).
- 1. (b. h.) (b. h.) to be, grow red. Num. R. s. 9 (p. 231ᵇ ed. Amst.) מַאֲדֶמֶת (היתה) if she was red-faced. Ḥull. 53ᵇ; a. fr.
- 2. to cause to blush, put to shame (usu. הלבין). Num. R. s. 4 (p. 218ᵈ ed. Amst.) (play on עובד אדום).—Part. מַאֲדִים the planet Mars. Sabb. 156ᵃ.—Part. Hof. מְאָדָּם, מְאוּדָּם. Y. Sabb. VII, 10ᶜ top מְאָדָּמִים dyed red.
אָדָם
- m. (b. h.) man, pr. n. m. Adam, frequ. א׳ הראשון (abbr. אה"ר). Gen. R. s. 17; a. fr.—ספרו של, ספרא דאה"ר אה"ר the (allegorical) book of Adam containing all generations and their leaders from beginning to resurrection, i.e. destinies of humanity. Ex. R. s. 40 beg. B. Mets. 85ᵇ bot.
אֲדָם
- (= דָּם, דְּמָא) blood. Targ. I Chron. XXII, 7; a. e.—Y. Maas. Sh. V, 56ᵈ top מגבלא אַדְמֵיה to mix its (the bird’s) blood. Git. 47ᵃ; v. חוּל II. Pl. אַדְמִין. Targ. I Chr. l. c.; a. e.
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 107 distinct written forms H120 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 47 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H120, 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
- אדם ʼâdôm H122 red
- אדם ʼôdem H124 ruby
- אדמדם ʼădamdâm H125 reddish
- אדמה ʼădâmâh H127 ground
- אדמני ʼadmônîy H132 red
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 8 — 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 498 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 526 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
- Genesis 1:26
- Exodus 4:11
- Leviticus 1:2
- Numbers 3:13
- Deuteronomy 4:28
- Joshua 11:14
- Judges 16:7
- 1 Samuel 15:29
- 2 Samuel 7:14
- 1 Kings 8:38
- 2 Kings 7:10
- 1 Chronicles 5:21
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.
