בְּרֵכָה
pool
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 10 times (59%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 5 times (29%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (6%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 17 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1295 appears — 15 distinct verses across 8 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.
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 2:13 בְּרֵכַ֥ת הַ/בְּרֵכָה֙ הַ/בְּרֵכָ֖ה n c fs cs ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs Joab the son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out, and met them by the pool of Gibeon; and they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool.
- 2 Samuel 4:12 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs David commanded his young men, and they killed them, and cut off their hands and their feet, and hanged them up beside the pool in Hebron. But they took the head of Ish-bosheth, and buried it in the grave of Abner in Hebron.
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Kings 2 verses
- 2 Kings 18:17 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֣ה ptcl def.art + n c fs The king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great army to Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field.
- 2 Kings 20:20 הַ/בְּרֵכָה֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into the city, aren't they written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
Nehemiah 3 verses
- Nehemiah 2:14 בְּרֵכַ֖ת n c fs cs Then I went on to the spring gate and to the king's pool: but there was no place for the animal that was under me to pass.
- Nehemiah 3:15 בְּרֵכַ֤ת n c fs cs The spring gate repaired Shallun the son of Colhozeh, the ruler of the district of Mizpah; he built it, and covered it, and set up the doors of it, the bolts of it, and the bars of it, and the wall of the pool of Shelah by the king's garden, even to the stairs that go down from the city of David.
- Nehemiah 3:16 הַ/בְּרֵכָה֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs After him repaired Nehemiah the son of Azbuk, the ruler of half the district of Beth Zur, to the place over against the tombs of David, and to the pool that was made, and to the house of the mighty men.
Ecclesiastes 1 verse
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Isaiah 4 verses
- Isaiah 7:3 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֣ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Then Yahweh said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you, and Shearjashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller's field.
- Isaiah 22:9 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs You saw the breaches of the city of David, that they were many; and you gathered together the waters of the lower pool;
- Isaiah 22:11 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֣ה ptcl def.art + n c fs you made also a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you didn't look to him who had done this, neither did you have respect for him who purposed it long ago.
- Isaiah 36:2 הַ/בְּרֵכָ֣ה ptcl def.art + n c fs The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to king Hezekiah with a great army. He stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field.
Nahum 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.
ברכה — transliterated bᵉrêkâh — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “pool.” It first appears in 2 Samuel 2:13. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 15 verses — uncommon. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Isaiah. Related forms include ברך, ברך and ברך. 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 H1295 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 10 verses · 67%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 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: Pool 11×
- American Standard Version: Pool 9×, Pools 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pool 13×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Pool 10×, The 5×, Pool of 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1295 across 17 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1295 across 17 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 H1295 across 16 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1295 across 22 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 BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- pool, pond
Word origin
בְּרֵכָה n.f. pool, pond
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from ברך (bârak) (H1288) — to bless.
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.
בְּרָכָה
- 1. blessing, bestowal of prosperity, good wishes, choice, plenty. Keth. 5ᵃ הואיל … ב׳ לדגים because on it the blessing was given to the fish (Gen. I, 22, to be fruitful). Y. ib. I, beg. 24ᵈ אין כתיב ב׳ וכ׳ the blessing (Gen. II, 3) refers not to man but to the day.—Erub. 63ᵇ, a. fr. תבא עליו ב׳ blessing rest upon him (he acts rightly). Keth. 103ᵃ; B. Bath. 144ᵇ בִּרְכַת הבית ברובה the blessing of a house consists in the number of inmates (every member of a household contributes to its comfort); Tosef. Keth. XII, 3 ב׳ הבית מרובה. B. Mets. 42ᵃ אין הב׳ מצוייה וכ׳ blessing (unexpected supply, miraculous increase) will not take place in things which are weighed &c.; Taan. 8ᵇ; a. fr.—Pes. 50ᵇ, a. fr. אינו רואה סימן ב׳ לעולם will never see a sign of prosperity; a. fr. e.g. Genesis 1:22
- 2. benediction, prayer to be recited on certain occasions. Ber. 35ᵃ man must not taste anything בלא ב׳ without a blessing. Ib. 40ᵇ כל ב׳ שאין וכ׳ a benediction in which the Name of the Lord is not invoked, is no benediction; a. fr.—Pl. בְּרָכוֹת. 1) blessings, benedictions. Ib. 45ᵇ; a. v. fr.—Sabb. 115ᵇ כותבי ב׳ those who write out the formulas of prayer.—2) B’rakhoth, the first treatise of the Mishnah, Talmud, a. Tosefta.—Compounds: בִּרְכַת אבלים the prayer for consolation inserted in the mourners’ grace after meal. Keth. 8ᵇ; a. fr.—ב׳ ארוסין benediction preceding betrothal, v. אֵרוּסִין Ib. 7ᵇ.—ב׳ הארץ that portion of the grace after meal which refers to Palestine. Ib. 8ᵇ.—ב׳ הזבח the benediction before partaking of the festive offering (חֲגִיגָה) which accompanies the Paschal lamb. Pes. X, 9 (120ᵃ).—ב׳ הזימון the appeal to the partakers of a meal to say grace, common prayer. Ber. 45ᵇ.—ב׳ חתנים benediction on performing the marriage ceremony, also inserted in the grace after wedding meals during seven days. Keth. 8ᵇ.—ב׳ כהנים the priestly benediction (Num. VI, 24—26). Sot. VII, 6.—ב׳ המזון grace after meal. Keth. l. c.—ב׳ המצוות benediction on performing a divine command (of a symbolic nature). Ib. 7ᵇ.—ב׳ רחבה benediction of consolation pronounced in open air on the mourners’ return from burial (v. הַבְרָאָה). Ib. 8ᵇ.—ב׳ התורה benediction before and after reading the Law. Y. Ber. I, 3ᶜ.—[For other compounds see the respective determinants.] e.g. Numbers 6:24
- 3. blasphemy. בִּרְכַת השם. Snh. 56ᵃ sq.; (Tosef. Ab. Zar. VIII (IX), 4 קיללת).
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 9 distinct written forms H1295 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/בְּרֵכָ֣ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 18:17 | 4 |
| הַ/בְּרֵכָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 2:13 | 3 |
| הַ/בְּרֵכָה֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 20:20 | 3 |
| בְּרֵכ֣וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Song of Solomon 7:4 | 2 |
| בְּרֵכַ֖ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Nehemiah 2:14 | 1 |
| בְּרֵכַ֣ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 1 Kings 22:38 | 1 |
| בְּרֵכַ֤ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Nehemiah 3:15 | 1 |
| בְּרֵכַ֥ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 2 Samuel 2:13 | 1 |
| כִ/בְרֵֽכַת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Nahum 2:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1295, 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 8 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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.
