גֹּ֫שֶׁן
Goshen
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Goshen’ 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 H1657 appears in the Book of Exodus — 2 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.
Exodus
- Exodus 8:22 גֹּ֗שֶׁן n Proper I will set apart in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end you may know that I am Yahweh in the midst of the earth.
- Exodus 9:26 גֹּ֔שֶׁן n Proper Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail.
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.
At its core, גשן (Gôshen) means “Goshen.” The word gravitates to Genesis (64%), then Joshua and Exodus. It appears 14 verses across 3 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Genesis 45:10, it enters the text early. 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 H1657 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,836
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,836 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 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 14 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 11 verses · 79%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 21%
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: Goshen 15×
- American Standard Version: Goshen 13×
- Berean Standard Bible: Goshen 14×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Goshen 15×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1657 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1657 across 15 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1657 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1657 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. district in Egypt E. of lower Nile, v. Eb GS 500 ff.; Naville Goshen, 1887, who reads hierogl. Kesem, but cf. Groff JAs xiv. 527 (𝔊 Γεσεμ (Ἀραβιας))—אֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן Gn 45:10 (JE) 46:34; 47:1, 4, 6, 27; 50:8; Ex 8:18; 9:26 (all J); אַ֫רְצָה גֹּשֶׁן Gn 46:28 (J); גֹּ֑שְׁנָה v 28, 29 (both J), in both 𝔊 καθʼ Ἡρώων πόλιν cf. Di (P has land רעמסס 47:11 etc., cf. Di Gn 45:10). e.g. Genesis 45:10
- 2. ארץ הַגֹּשֶׁן Jos 11:16 (D), אֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן Jos 10:41 (D), גֹּשֶׁן Jos 15:51 (P) (𝔊 in all Γοσομ) a city named with חֹלֹן & גִּלֹה cf. Di.—not clearly located, but on southern border of Judah. e.g. Joshua 11:16
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.pr.loc. (on etym. cf. Di Gn 45:10)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: probably of Egyptian origin
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms H1657 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| גֹּֽשֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:28 | 4 |
| גֹּ֔שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Exodus 9:26 | 3 |
| גֹּ֑שְׁנָ/ה | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:28 | 2 |
| גֹּ֗שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Exodus 8:22 | 2 |
| גֹּ֑שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Genesis 47:27 | 1 |
| גֹּ֖שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 10:41 | 1 |
| הַ/גֹּ֔שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 11:16 | 1 |
| וְ/גֹ֥שֶׁן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:51 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Goshen). 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
(1.) A district in Egypt where Jacob and his family settled, and in which they remained till the Exodus (Gen. 45:10; 46:28, 29, 31, etc.). It is called "the land of Goshen" (47:27), and also simply "Goshen" (46:28), and "the land of Rameses" (47:11; Ex. 12:37), for the towns Pithom and Rameses lay within its borders; also Zoan or Tanis (Ps. 78:12). It lay on the east of the Nile, and apparently not far from the royal residence. It was "the best of the land" (Gen. 47:6, 11), but is now a desert. It is first mentioned in Joseph's message to his father. It has been identified with the modern Wady Tumilat, lying between the eastern part of the Delta and the west border of Palestine. It was a pastoral district, where some of the king's cattle were kept (Gen. 47:6). The inhabitants were not exclusively Israelites (Ex. 3:22; 11:2; 12:35, 36).
(2.) A district in Palestine (Josh. 10:41; 11:16). It was a part of the maritime plain of Judah, and lay between Gaza and Gibeon.
(3.) A town in the mountains of Judah (Josh. 15:51).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
+ The name of a part of Egypt where the Israelites dwelt during the whole period of their sojourn in that country. It was probably situated on the eastern border of the Nile, extending from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. It contained the treasure-cities of Rameses and Pittim. It was a pasture land, especially suited to a shepherd people, and sufficient for the Israelites, who there prospered, and were separate from the main body of the Egyptians. + A district in southern Palestine conquered by Joshua. (Joshua 10:41) It lay between Gaza and Gibeon. + A town in the mountains of Judah, probably in a part of the country of Goshen.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
approaching; drawing near
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 14 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
