דְּחַל
to fear
‘to fear’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal Passive verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Qal Passive
- An archaic passive of the Qal, preserved in a few forms.
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (33%)
- Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (33%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1763 appears — 6 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Daniel 6 verses
- Daniel 2:31 דְּחִֽיל Qal Passive ptcp.pass ms You, O king, saw, and, behold, a great image. This image, which was mighty, and whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and the aspect of it was awesome.
- Daniel 4:5 וִֽ/ידַחֲלִנַּ֑/נִי conj + Piel impf 3ms + sfx pers 1cs I saw a dream which made me afraid; and the thoughts on my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.
- Daniel 5:19 וְ/דָחֲלִ֖ין conj + Qal ptcp.act mp and because of the greatness that he gave him, all the peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him: whom he would he killed, and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he raised up, and whom he would he put down.
- Daniel 6:26 וְ/דָ֣חֲלִ֔ין conj + Qal ptcp.act mp I make a decree, that in all the dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God, and steadfast forever, His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed; and his dominion shall be even to the end.
- Daniel 7:7 דְּחִילָה֩ Qal Passive ptcp.pass fs After this I saw in the night-visions, and, behold, a fourth animal, awesome and powerful, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet: and it was diverse from all the animals that were before it; and it had ten horns.
- Daniel 7:19 דְּחִילָ֣ה Qal Passive ptcp.pass fs Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth animal, which was diverse from all of them, exceedingly terrible, whose teeth were of iron, and its nails of brass; which devoured, broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet;
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.
דחל (dᵉchal) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to fear.” It clusters heavily in Daniel, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. It turns up in 6 verses across 1 book, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Daniel 2:31. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Peal, Pael, and more). The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1763 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 6 verses 100%
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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 100%
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: Dreadful 2×
- American Standard Version: Aspect thereof was terrible 1×, Exceeding terrible 1×, Fear 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Fear 2×, Terrifying 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Dreadful 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1763 across 6 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 H1763 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1763 across 6 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1763 across 6 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.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Peal (the basic Aramaic stem, parallel to Qal) and Pael (the intensive Aramaic stem, parallel to Piel).
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.
Peal
- . terrible
Pael
- . the dream made me afraid.
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
Derived from זחל (zâchal) (H2119) — to shrink back.
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.
דּחֵיל
- (cmp. זחל a. Arab. daḥala) [to be depressed, bent,] to fear, be afraid of, shun; to worship, revere. Targ. Gen. XVIII, 15. Targ. Ps. XXXIII, 8; a. fr.—Part. דָּחִיל, דְּחֵיל; constr. דְּחִיל. Targ. Ex. IX, 20. Targ. Gen. XIX, 30; a. fr.—Sabb. 23ᵇ דד׳ מרבנן he who reveres the scholars. Y. Naz. IX, end 58ᵃ (play on מורה a. מורא, v. Mishn. ib. IX, 5) מה ביזרא ד׳ וכ׳ as the grain is afraid of the iron (scythe), so is the hair &c.; a. fr.—Sabb. 31ᵇ, a. fr. דְּחִיל חטאין shunning sin.
- to frighten, to cause fear. Targ. II Sam. XIV, 15 דַּחֲלוּנִי ed. Lag. (ed. דחלונני).
- to frighten, scare. Cant. R. to III, 6 מן הדא את מדחיל לי with this (fire) wilt thou frighten me?—Koh. R. to VII, 1 (prov.) whom a snake once has bitten, חבלא מדחיל ליה a rope will frighten.
- to be afraid. Lev. R. s. 9 אִידְּחִילַת מיניה she was afraid of him.
דְּחַל
- , v. דְּחֵיל
חֵיל I
- (חוּל, v. חַיִיל) surrounding, esp. Ḥel, a place within the fortification of the Temple. Midd. I, 5. Snh. 88ᵇ. Par. III, 11; Targ. Y. Num. XIX, 9; a. fr.
חל
- , Y. Ned. IV, beg. 39ᶜ bot כגון החל מן נונייה, read: כגון הדין חֶלְמוֹן נ׳ as, for instance, fish-raw.—Y. Ab. Zar. II, 40ᵈ top כחל לה, read: כחללה, v. חֲלָלָא.
חָל
- , perf. a. part. of חוּל.
חַל I
- , v. חֲלַל
חַל II
- (חלל, cmp. חָלֵי) weak, mild (wine). Targ. Y. Deut. VIII, 8, opp. חָרִיף.
חַל III
- vinegar, v. חָלָא III.
חָלָא III
- (חול or חלל) [turned, spoiled,] vinegar. Targ. O. Num. VI, 3 חַל; Y. חֲלָא. Targ. Ps. LXIX, 22 חָ׳ ed. (Ms. חֲ׳). Targ. Prov. XXV, 20 חלא ed. Lag. (ed. חֵילָא, Ms. חוֹ׳). Targ. Ruth II, 14.—Ab. Zar. 12ᵇ. Gen. R. s. 39, v. זוּל I ch.—Ḥull. 120ᵃ ח׳ דקריש Ar. (ed. חלב) a jellied vinegar sauce of meat; a. fr.—Y. Maasr. III, 50ᵈ bot. ח׳ בר חמרא a deteriorated son, v. חוֹמֶץ; Ḥull. 105ᵃ. [Y. Ter. VII, 45ᵈ bot. בחלא, read: בחַקְלָא.]
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 H1763 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| דְּחִֽיל | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 2:31 | 1 |
| דְּחִילָ֣ה | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 7:19 | 1 |
| דְּחִילָה֩ | Verb, Qal Passive, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 7:7 | 1 |
| וְ/דָ֣חֲלִ֔ין | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 6:26 | 1 |
| וְ/דָחֲלִ֖ין | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 5:19 | 1 |
| וִֽ/ידַחֲלִנַּ֑/נִי | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Daniel 4:5 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1763, 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
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 → 2 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 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
