דָּמָה
to cease
also: cause to cease, cut off, destroy, perish fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘intr. cease Je 14’
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him 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”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 11 distinct
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 4 times (25%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 3 times (19%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Infinitive Absolute 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (6%)
+3 more forms (3 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1820 appears — 14 distinct verses across 7 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.
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 6:5 נִדְמֵ֗יתִי Niphal pf 1cs Then I said, "Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of Hosts!"
- Isaiah 15:1 נִדְמָ֔ה נִדְמָֽה Niphal pf 3ms Niphal pf 3ms The burden of Moab. For in a night Ar of Moab is laid waste, [and] brought to nothing; for in a night Kir of Moab is laid waste, [and] brought to nothing.
Jeremiah 3 verses
- Jeremiah 6:2 דָּמִ֖יתִי Qal pf 1cs The comely and delicate one, the daughter of Zion, will I cut off.
- Jeremiah 14:17 תִּדְמֶ֑ינָה Qal juss 3fp You shall say this word to them, Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound.
- Jeremiah 47:5 נִדְמְתָ֥ה Niphal pf 3fs Baldness is come on Gaza; Ashkelon is brought to nothing, the remnant of their valley: how long will you cut yourself?
Lamentations 1 verse
Hosea 4 verses
- Hosea 4:5 וְ/דָמִ֖יתִי conj + Qal wpf 1cs You will stumble in the day, And the prophet will also stumble with you in the night; And I will destroy your mother.
- Hosea 4:6 נִדְמ֥וּ Niphal pf 3cp My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, That you may be no priest to me. Because you have your God's law, I will also forget your children.
- Hosea 10:7 נִדְמֶ֥ה Niphal ptcp.pass ms Samaria and her king float away, Like a twig on the water.
- Hosea 10:15 נִדְמֹ֥ה נִדְמָ֖ה Niphal inf.abs Niphal pf 3ms So Bethel will do to you because of your great wickedness. At daybreak the king of Israel will be destroyed.
Obadiah 1 verse
Zephaniah 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.
The Hebrew verb דמה centers on the idea of “to cease.” Read the stem: it spans 4 stems, including Qal and Piel. Spanning 14 verses in 7 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Hosea dominates its distribution — 4 of 14 verses. Debuting at Psalms 49:12, it then recurs through the corpus. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1820 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.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 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.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 79%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 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).
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†: Brought to silence 2×, Is cut off 2×, Perish 2×
- American Standard Version†: Brought to nought 2×, Perish 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Destroyed 2×, Perish 2×, Will be silenced 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Is destroyed 2×, They are destroyed 2×, Will be destroyed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1820 across 16† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H1820 across 16† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H1820 across 13† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1820 across 16† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
9 senses and sub-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 Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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 9 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.
דמה I be like, resemble (NH id., Aramaic דְּמֵי, דְּמָא, ܕܡܳܐ cf. דמין, ܕܡܰܝܳܐ price, Nab. דמי id. (Nö in EutNab.Inscr. p. 35)
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. ד׳ Ez 31:8 ψ 144:4; 3 fs. דָּֽמְתָה Ct 7:8; 2 ms. דָּמִיתָ Ez 31:2, 18; 1 s. דָּמִיתִי ψ 102:7; 3 pl. דָּמוּ Ez 31:8; 1 pl. דָּמִינוּ Is 1:9; Impf. 3 ms. יִדְמֶה ψ 89:7; 1 pl. וְנִדְמֶה consec. Is 46:5; Imv. ms. דְּמֵה Ct 2:17; 8:14; Pt. דּוֹמֶה Ct 2:9;—be like, resemble, of external appearance, sq. לְ, Ct 7:8; 2:9, 17; 8:14; sq. אֶל־ Ez 31:8(×2), 18 (all of tree, fig. of Pharaoh); of condition or quality sq. לְ Is 1:9 ψ 102:7; 144:4; so מִי … יִדְמֶה ליהוה ψ 89:7; also abs. Is 46:5; sq. אֶל Ez 31:2. e.g. Ezekiel 31:8
Piel
- Pf. דִּמָּה 2 S 21:5, דִּמִּיתָ ψ 50:21; דִּמִּיתִי Nu 33:56, Is 14:24; sf. דִּמִּיתִיךָ Ct 1:9, דִּמּוּ 2 S 21:5; Impf. יְדַמֶּה Is 10:7; 2 fs. תְּדַמִּי Est 4:13 (juss.); אֲדַמֶּה La 2:13; Ho 12:11; 2 mpl. תְּדַמְּיוּן Is 40:18; sf. תְּדַמְּיוּנִי Is 40:25; 46:5;—liken, compare; imagine, think, devise;— e.g. 2 Samuel 21:5
- 1. liken, i.e. consider to be like, compare, causat. of Qal, sq. לְ of external appearance Ct 1:9; of quality or condition Is 46:5 (obj. י׳) La 2:13; sq. אֶל of external a appearance Is 40:18, 25 (both obj. God in ref. to idols); abs. use comparisons or similitudes (parables, symbols, etc.) Ho 12:11 (subj. י׳). e.g. Song of Solomon 1:9
- 2. imagine, form an idea, devise 2 S 21:5 (on context cf. Dr); think, intend, sq. Inf. Nu 33:56 (J or H); Ju 20:5; Est 4:13; abs. Is 10:7; cf. 14:24; think that, sq. obj. cl. (Impf. without conj.) ψ 50:21; think of, sq. acc. ψ 48:10. e.g. 2 Samuel 21:5
Hithpael
- make oneself or become like; Impf; אֶדַּמֶּה לְעֶלְיוֹן Is 14:14 I will make myself like the Most High (on form cf. Ges§ 54, 2). e.g. Isaiah 14:14
דמה II cease, cause to cease, cut off, destroy
Qal
- Perf. 1 s. דָּמִיתִי Je 6:2, וְדָמִ֫יתִי consec. Ho 4:5; Impf. 3 fs. תִּדְמֶה La 3:49; 3 fpl. juss. תִּדְמֶינָה Je 14:17;— e.g. Jeremiah 6:2
- 1. intr. cease Je 14:17 (eyes from weeping) La 3:49 (id.) e.g. Jeremiah 14:17
- 2. cause to cease, cut off, destroy, c. acc. Israel (under fig. of בת־ציון) Je 6:2; (under fig. of אִמֶּ֑ךָ) Ho 4:5. e.g. Jeremiah 6:2
Niphal
- Pf. נִדְמָה Is 15:1, 1 +; 3 fs. נִדְמְתָה Je 47:5; 2 ms. נִדְמֵיתָה Ob 5, נִדְמֵיתָ Ez 32:2; 1 s. נִדְמֵיתִי Is 6:5; 3 pl. נִדְמוּ Ho 4:6 +; Inf. abs. נִדְמֹה Ho 10:15; Pt. נִדְמֶה Ho 10:7; be cut off, destroyed, ruined, of a city Is 15:1, 1 (‖ שֻׁדַּד) Je 47:5; of people Ho 4:6; Zp 1:11; Ob 5; of king Ho 10:7, 15(×2) cf. Ez 32:2; of beasts ψ 49:13, 21; be ruined, undone, prophet at sight of Yahweh Is 6:5. e.g. Isaiah 15:1
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. vb. be like, resemble (NH id., Aramaic דְּמֵי, דְּמָא, ܕܡܳܐ cf. דמין, ܕܡܰܝܳܐ price, Nab. דמי id. (Nö in EutNab.Inscr. p. 35); also ܕܡܽܘܬܳܐ, and ܕܽܘܡܝܳܐ likeness (whence Arabic دُمْيَةٌ image, effigy, as loan-wd. Frä272) cf. דְּמוּת)—
II. vb. cease, cause to cease, cut off, destroy—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
דָּמָה
- pr. n. m., v. דָּמָא
דָּמָה ²
- , v. דמי
דמי
- v. דמם,
- 1. to mumble, think (cmp. דבב); to be silent. Denom. (דִּימָה,) דָּמוּת.
- 2. to imagine, compare. Denom. דְּמוּת.
- 3. (denom. of דְּמוּת) to resemble, be like, to imitate. Sabb. 133ᵇ הוי דוֹמֶה לו imitate Him. Ber. 29ᵇ שתפלתו דוֹמָה עליו וכ׳ to whom his prayer appears like a burden. Taan. 22ᵇ אין דורו דומה יפה (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 20) his generation was not considered worthy. B. Kam. 92ᵇ; Yalk. Jud. 67 ובן אדם לדו׳ לו (not ובני) and man associates with his equal. Sifra Sh’mini Par. 10, ch. XII; Ḥull. 76ᵇ הַדֹּומֶה that which resembles the animal specified in the Bible (species); הד׳ לַדֹּומֶה what resembles the animal classified with the animal specified in the Bible (genus); a. fr.—אֵינוֹ דוֹמֶה there is no resemblance, you cannot compare. Yeb. 64ᵃ א׳ ד׳ תפלת … לתפלת וכ׳ you cannot compare the prayer of … to the prayer of &c. Sabb. 119ᵇ; a. fr.—Ḥull. 48ᵇ זו דוֹמָה לזו these are analogous cases, v. Pi.—(משל) למה הדבר דומה (abbrev. מלה"ד, לה"ד) (a simile:) to what can this be compared?, a phrase introducing a simile. Taan. 25ᵇ. Yoma 86ᵇ; a. v. fr.
- [
- 1. (b. h.) to be silenced, undone].].
- 2. to be compared, to be imagined; to appear in the disguise of; to seem. Kidd. 32ᵇ כמה"ש נִדְמוּ לו that they appeared to him as ministering angels; נדמו לו לערביים they appeared to him as if they were Arabs. Succ. 52ᵃ צדיקים נ׳ להם כהר וכ׳ to the righteous sin will appear like a high mount; a. fr.—נִדְמֶה an animal suspected to be a hybrid or looking like one (cmp. דְּמַאי), esp. a lamb looking like a kid, and vice versa. Bekh. 12ᵃ ‘a ewe which gave birth to what looked like a kid’. Ḥull. 38ᵇ; a. fr.
- 1. to compare, judge from analogy. Lev. R. s. 32 דִּמִּיתִיךָ להם I made thee like them (beasts). B. Bath. 130ᵇ ובלבד שלא יְדַמֶּה וכ׳ but one must not decide ritual cases by analogy; v. Ḥull. 48ᵇ
- 2. to have an opinion without authority to refer to. Gitt. 19ᵃ; 37ᵃ מפני שאנו מְדַמִּין because we have such an opinion.—Part. pass. מְדוּמֶּה, pl. מְדוּמִּין; כמ׳ אני it seems to me, כמ׳ אנו it seems to us &c. Men. 18ᵃ. Taan. 23ᵃ; a. fr.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᵇ bot. כמ׳ הייתי I thought.
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 15 distinct written forms H1820 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1820, 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.
Derived from this word
- דומה dûwmâh H1745 silence
- דומיה dûwmîyâh H1747 silence
- דמה dummâh H1822 destroyed
- דמי dᵉmîy H1824 silence
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
