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בְּצַלְאֵל

Bezaleel

BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Bezaleel’ fuller range ↓

H1212 Strong's Hebrew
Bᵉtsalʼêl Transliteration
/bets-al-ale'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 9 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.

“Bezaleel” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name בצלאל (Bᵉtsalʼêl). More than two-thirds of its appearances fall in Exodus. It appears 9 verses across 4 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Exodus 31:2, it enters the text early. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Bezaleel
Modern gloss
Bezaleel
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H1212 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 →

9
distinct verses
The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
4 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
Exodus 31:2
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Exodus 31:2.
Ezra 10:30
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Ezra 10:30.
#2,481
by frequency
Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 6 · 67%
  • Historical 3 · 33%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 0 · 0%

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 9 distinct verses.

  • Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 67%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 33%

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: Bezaleel 9×
  • American Standard Version: Bezalel 9×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Bezalel 8×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bezalel 9×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H1212 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bezaleel” 9×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H1212 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bezalel” 9×

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H1212 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bezalel” 8×

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 H1212 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bezalel” 9×

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. a skilled artisan of tribe of Judah Ex 31:2; 35:30; 36:1, 2; 37:1; 38:22 (all P) 1 Ch 2:20 2 Ch 1:5. e.g. Exodus 31:2
  • 2. an Israelite Ezr 10:30. e.g. Ezra 10:30

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.m. (in the shadow (protection) of Ēl; cf. cuneif. Sil-Bêl, a king of Gaza, COT Jos 11:22)—

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from צל (tsêl) (H6738) — shadow.

Part of speech: Proper Name Masculine


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.

בְּצַלְאֵל

  • (b. h.) Bezaleel;
  • 1. the artificer of the Tabernacle. Ber. 55ᵃ. Ex. R. s. 48; a. fr.
  • 2. R. B., an Amora. Cant. R. to III, 11 ר׳ ברכיה בשם ר׳ ב׳ (Num. R. s. 12 בצלה; Pesik. Vayhi, p. 4ᵇ לוי; Yalk. Ex. 369 only בשם ר׳).

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 7 distinct written forms H1212 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
בְּצַלְאֵ֛ל Noun, Proper Exodus 31:2 3
בְצַלְאֵ֔ל Noun, Proper Ezra 10:30 1
בְצַלְאֵ֨ל Noun, Proper Exodus 36:1 1
בְּצַלְאֵ֘ל Noun, Proper Exodus 36:2 1
בְּצַלְאֵֽל Noun, Proper 1 Chronicles 2:20 1
בְּצַלְאֵל֙ Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 1:5 1
וּ/בְצַלְאֵ֛ל Noun, Proper Exodus 38:22 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1212, 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 → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. 4 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 (Bezaleel). 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

In the shadow of God; i.e., "under his protection", the artificer who executed the work of art in connection with the tabernacle in the wilderness (Ex. 31:2; 35:30). He was engaged principally in works of metal, wood, and stone; while Aholiab, who was associated with him and subordinate to him, had the charge of the textile fabrics (36:1, 2; 38:22). He was of the tribe of Judah, the son of Uri, and grandson of Hur (31:2). Mention is made in Ezra 10:30 of another of the same name.

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(in the shadow of God).

+ The son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah and one of the architects of the tabernacle. (Exodus 31:1-6) His charge was chiefly in all works of metal, wood and stone. (B.C. 1490.) + One of the sons of Pahath-moab who had taken a foreign wife. (Ezra 10:30) (B.C. 458.)

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

in the shadow of God

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.