גֵּרָא
Gera
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Gera’ 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 H1617 appears in the Book of 1 Chronicles — 3 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.
1 Chronicles
- 1 Chronicles 8:3 וְ/גֵרָ֖א conj + n Proper Bela had sons: Addar, and Gera, and Abihud,
- 1 Chronicles 8:5 וְ/גֵרָ֥א conj + n Proper and Gera, and Shephuphan, and Huram.
- 1 Chronicles 8:7 וְ/גֵרָ֖א conj + n Proper and Naaman, and Ahijah, and Gera, he carried them captive: and he became the father of Uzza and Ahihud.
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 גרא centers on the idea of “Gera.” Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 46:21. Spanning 9 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. 2 Samuel dominates its distribution — 3 of 9 verses. Dig into 9-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1617 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.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #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
- 2 Samuel 3 verses 33%
- 1 Chronicles 3 verses 33%
- Genesis 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 56%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 33%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 11%
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: Gera 9×
- American Standard Version: Gera 9×
- Berean Standard Bible: Gera 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Gera 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1617 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1617 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1617 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1617 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 4 senses 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.
- Gera = "a grain"
- a son of Benjamin
- a son of Bela and grandson of Benjamin
- any member of the Gera family of the Benjamite tribe
Word origin
n.pr.m. (Ph. גרא) son of Benjamin Gn 46:21 (lacking Nu 26:38–40); son of Belaʿ, & grandson of Benj., according to 1 Ch 8:3, 5 cf. v 7; designation of a Benjamite family or clan; hence Ehud called בֶּן־גֵּרָא Ju 3:15, & so Shimei, 2 S 16:5; 19:17, 19 1 K 2:8.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from גרה (gêrâh) (H1626) — gerah.
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.
גְּרָא
- , v. גְּרִי
גֵּרָא
- , Targ. Y. Gen. XXX, 11, v. גַּדָּא
גְּרִי
- —Pa. גָּרֵי
- 1. to incite, let loose. Targ. Num. XXI, 6; a. fr.
- 2. to let off, drive, thrust. Naz. 4ᵇ דילמא גָּרוּיֵי ג׳ בהו perhaps he thrust (the jaw bone) at them (without touching them; Ar. a. Rashi: גרדויי גרד וכ׳, obviously for גררויי גרר, cmp. גיררא, v. Koh. Ar. Compl. s. v.). Taan. 25ᵃ אֲגָרֵי בך וכ׳, v. גִּירָא II. [
- 3. to drag (cmp. גרר). Nidd. 36ᵇ, v. גְּדֵי.]
- 1. to attack. Targ. Deut. II, 5; a. fr. Targ. I Sam. XIII, 4 (h. text נבאש!). [Targ. Ps. XXII, 8 ed. Lag., v. גְּרַר.]—Lam. R. to I, 5 מלכוותא מִתְגַּרְיָן בכון kingdoms will attack you; a. e.
- 2. to be let loose, hurled. Targ. Y. Deut. XXVIII, 60; a. e.—Y. Peah I, 16ᵃ top הא דובא מִתְגַּרְיָא לך that same temptation will be let loose &c., v. preced. Hithpa.
- 3. to become impassionate, be hot with sexual passion. Snh. 64ᵃ דלא מִיגְּרֵי איניש בקרובתיה Ms. M. (ed. איגרו) that one does not fall in love with his nearest kindred. Ab. Zar. 22ᵇ כיון דמיגרי בה because the animal will show his sexual desire by running after her (and thus betray her sin).—Denom. תִּגְרָא.
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 6 distinct written forms H1617 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| גֵּרָ֥א | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:21 | 2 |
| גֵּרָא֙ | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 19:16 | 2 |
| וְ/גֵרָ֖א | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 8:3 | 2 |
| גֵּרָ֔א | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 16:5 | 1 |
| גֵּרָ֗א | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 19:18 | 1 |
| וְ/גֵרָ֥א | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 8:5 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Gera). 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
Grain. (1.) The son of Bela and grandson of Benjamin (1 Chr. 8:3, 5, 7).
(2.) The father of Ehud the judge (Judg. 3:15).
(3.) The father of Shimei, who so grossly abused David (2 Sam. 16:5; 19:16, 18).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(a grain), one of the "sons," i.e. descendants, of Benjamin. (Genesis 46:21) Gera, who is named, (Judges 3:15) as the ancestor of Ehud, and in (2 Samuel 16:5) as the ancestor of Shimei who cursed David, is probably also the same person (though some consider them different persons).
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
pilgrimage, combat; dispute
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.
