בְּרוֹשׁ
cypress
also: fir, juniper, pine 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
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1265 appears in the Book of Hosea — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Hosea
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.
“cypress” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun ברוש (bᵉrôwsh). The King James Version usually renders it “fir trees,” while modern versions prefer “cypress” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. With 20 verses in 10 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in 1 Kings, which alone accounts for 25% of its uses. Not a single-sense word: its full sense range also takes in “fir”, “juniper”, and “pine”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1265 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 →
- 20
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 20 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,513
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,513 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 20 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Kings 5 verses 25%
- Isaiah 5 verses 25%
- 2 Chronicles 2 verses 10%
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 20 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 17 verses · 85%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 15%
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†: Fir trees 7×, Fir 5×, Fir tree 4×
- American Standard Version†: Fir 4×, Fir-tree 3×, Fir-trees 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Cypress 11×, Cypresses 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Cypress 13×, Cypress trees 3×, Cypresses 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1265 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H1265 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H1265 across 19† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1265 across 21† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 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. (lit.) a noble tree, usually ‖ ארז (except 2 S 6:5; 1 K 6:34; 2 Ch 3:5 ψ 104:17; Is 55:13; Ho 14:9; Na 2:4); as standing and growing Is 14:8; 37:24 = 2 K 19:23, Is 41:19; 55:13 (‖ הֲדַס) 60:13 (‖ כבוד לבנון = ארז) ψ 104:17. e.g. 2 Samuel 6:5
- 2. sim. of luxuriance, stateliness Ez 31:8, productiveness Ho 14:9 (Now thinks cypress), fig. for spear-shafts Na 2:4 Hi-St, but 𝔊 𝔖 פרשׁים; fig. for mighty men Zc 11:2. e.g. Ezekiel 31:8
- 3. as material (always pl.), for building temple (עצי ב׳) 1 K 5:22, 24; 6:34 cf. 9:11; 2 Ch 2:7; עץ ב׳ (sing.) 2 Ch 3:5 (cf. Baer’s n.); צלעות ב׳ 1 K 6:15; for ships (no עץ) Ez 27:5;—בְּכֹל עֲצֵי ברושׁים 2 S 6:5 appar. = with all musical instruments made of fir, but ‖ 1 Ch 13:8 בְּכָל־עֹז וּבְשִׁירִים & so here 𝔊 We Dr. e.g. 1 Kings 5:22
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. Ho 14:9 cypress or fir (Assyrian burâšu COTGloss, Aramaic בּרוֹתא, ܒܪܽܘܬܳܐ cf. בְּרוֹת infr., v. also Gr. βράθυ, Lat. bratum, cypress, juniper (PS); in favour of cypress, also 𝔊 𝔖 & so Thes; in favour of fir or pine, 𝔙 Rob in RobGes (because cypress not now indigenous on Lebanon); cf. also RSProph. iv. n. 20 who lays stress on Ph. n.pr.loc. אי בשם (= אי ברושים) = Gr. Πιτυοῦσαι i.e. isle of firs;—v. further SchroedPhön. Spr. 99 LöwNo. 59 & Brathu as name of Hermon Philo Bybl. in Euseb Praep. Evang. i. 10)—בְּרוֹשׁ Ho 14:9 + 4 times; בְּרוֹשִׁים 2 S 6:5 + 11 times, בְּרשִׁים Na 2:4, בְּרוֹשָׁיו Is 37:24, בְּרשָׁיו 2 K 19:23;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: of uncertain derivation
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.
בְּרוֹשׁ
- (b. h.) cypress. R. Hash. 23ᵃ; Taan. 25ᵇ, a. e. (as a species of cedar); v. בְּרוֹת a. בְּרָתָא.
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 17 distinct written forms H1265 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1265, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 19 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 20 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
- 2 Samuel 6:5
- 1 Kings 5:10
- 2 Kings 19:23
- 2 Chronicles 2:8
- Psalms 104:17
- Isaiah 14:8
- Ezekiel 27:5
- Hosea 14:8
- Nahum 2:3
- Zechariah 11:2
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.
