דַּלָּה
hair
also: threads, thrum 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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
- 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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1803 appears in the Book of 2 Kings — 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.
2 Kings
- 2 Kings 24:14 דַּלַּ֥ת n c fs cs He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.
- 2 Kings 25:12 וּ/מִ/דַּלַּ֣ת conj + prep + n c fs cs But the captain of the guard left of the poorest of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
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, דלה (dallâh) means “hair.” Scripture first uses it in Genesis 41:19. It turns up in 8 verses across 5 books, an uncommon footprint. The word gravitates to Jeremiah (38%), then 2 Kings and Genesis. Not a single-sense word, it carries 3 senses, among them “threads” and “thrum”. Dig into 8-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1803 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 75%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 13%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 13%
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†: Poor 3×, Certain of the poor 2×
- American Standard Version†: Poorest 4×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Poorest 3×, Some of the poorest 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: But 1×, Is 1×, Loom 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1803 across 8† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1803 across 8† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1803 across 7† 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 H1803 across 7† 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 0 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.
דלה I coll., hair, thrum (both from hanging down)
דלה II the poor
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
I. n.f. coll., hair, thrum (both from hanging down)—דַּלָּה Is 38:12; cstr. דַּלַּת Ct 7:6;—hair, ד׳ ראשׁך Ct 7:6; thrum (threads of warp hanging in loom) in sim. of premature death מִדַּלָּה יְבַצְּעֵנִי Is 38:12.
II. n.f. the poor—cstr. דַּלַּת Je 40:7 + 2 times; pl. דַּלּוֹת Je 52:15, 16;—the poor (coll., weak, helpless ones) Je 40:7 2 K 24:14; 25:12 (in ‖ Je 52:16, as also v 15, MT has strangely the pl.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from דלה (dâlâh) (H1802) — to draw.
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.
דָּלָה
- , v. דלי
דלי
- [to be suspended, swing; denom. דֳּלִי; whence]
- 1. to draw water. Gen. R. s. 93; Cant. R. to I, 1. Ex. R. s. 1 אנשים דּוֹלִים וכ׳ men draw the water and women water the flock; a. fr.—Yoma 28ᵇ (play on ד̇מ̇ש̇ק̇, Gen. XV, 2) שדּוֹֹלֶה ומ̇ש̇ק̇ה וכ׳ he (Eliezer) drew and gave to drink of his master’s teachings.—2) to lift up, relieve. Midr. Till. to Ps. I, 3 וכשיִדְלֵנִי וכ׳ and when the Lord shall lift me up out of the depths of suffering. Cant. R. to II, 1. e.g. Genesis 15:2
- 1. to draw water, to irrigate. B. Kam. 51ᵇ המַדְלֶה מים וכ׳ he who draws water (to irrigate his field &c.); ואני אַדְלֶה and I will &c.; a. fr.
- 2. (denom. of דָּלִית) to suspend, to train a plant to an espalier &c. Succ. I, 4 ה׳ עליה וכ׳ if he trained a vine over the festive wreath. Kil. VI, 4; a. fr.—Part. pass. מוּדְלֶה, f. מוּדְלָה. Ib. Midd. III, 8. Y. B. Mets. X, 12ᶜ, v. דָּלִית.—Bab. ib. 91ᵇ במוּדָלוֹת Ms. F. (ed. במודלית) when figs and grapes overhang one another. [Y. Shebi. II, 33ᶜ bot. מודלה, v. מִדְלַעַת.]
- to sprinkle. Part. מְדַלֶּה, pl. מְדַלִּין. M. Kat. 4ᵃ sq., v. דָּלַל.
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 7 distinct written forms H1803 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/מִ/דַּלַּ֣ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 2 Kings 25:12 | 2 |
| דַּלּ֨וֹת | Adjective, Adjective, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 41:19 | 1 |
| דַּלַּ֥ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 2 Kings 24:14 | 1 |
| וְ/דַלַּ֥ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Song of Solomon 7:5 | 1 |
| וּ/מִ/דַּלּ֣וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Jeremiah 52:16 | 1 |
| וּ/מִ/דַּלּ֨וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Jeremiah 52:15 | 1 |
| מִ/דַּלָּ֣ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 38:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1803, 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 7 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
