דָּקַר
to pierce
also: thrust through, pierce through fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal 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”). Here: ‘pierce’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- 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).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- 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
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 distinct verse where H1856 appears in the Niphal stem, across 1 book. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Isaiah 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.
At its core, דקר (dâqar) means “to pierce.” It first appears in Numbers 25:8. Spanning 10 verses in 8 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Read the stem: it spans 3 stems, including Qal and Niphal. Sharing its root, it stands alongside מדקרה, בדקר and דקר. 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 H1856 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 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 10 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 70%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 20%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 10%
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: Thrust 2×, Thrust me through 2×
- American Standard Version: Thrust 2×, Thrust me through 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Run me through 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Stab me 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1856 across 11 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1856 across 11 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1856 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H1856 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 Pual (the passive of 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 3 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.
Qal
- pierce, run through
Niphal
- . be pierced through
Pual
- . pierced, riddled
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
[ דָּקַר ] vb. pierce, pierce through
— 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.
דָּקַר
- (b. h.)
- 1. to dig, bore, pierce. Sabb. 110ᵃ, a. e. (explain. מי דקרין, v. דֶּקֶל) שהם דּוֹקְרִין וכ׳ because they make an opening in the bile. Y. Ned. IX, 41ᵇ bot. ודוֹקְרָהּ בלבו and sticks it (the sword) into his own heart. Gitt. 56ᵃ, v. next w.—Kidd. 22ᵇ; a. fr.
- 2. (cmp. דֶּקֶל) to spread, branch off. Succ. 13ᵃ Ar.; Erub. 11ᵇ; 16ᵃ קנים הדּוֹקְרִים (הדּוֹקְרִין) reeds which spread, i.e. the top reeds, v. דּוֹקְרָן.—Part. Pu. מְדוּקָּר ramified, formed like a דּוֹקְרָן. Erub. 11ᵇ Ar.
- to be pierced, stabbed. Tanḥ. Pinḥ. 1; Num. R. s. 21, beg.
דְּקַר
- , to stab. Gitt. 56ᵃ בעו למִדְקְרֵיה (the guardsmen) wanted to stab his body (to see whether R. Joḥ. was really dead). Ib. (Hebr.) יאמרו רבן דָּקְרוּ they (the Romans) will say, they stabbed their teacher. [Ex. R. s. 47 ודקרין, v. קְרֵי.]
דֶּקֶר
- (preced.) a pronged tool, mattock (v. Sm. Ant. s. v. Raster). Bets. I, 2; 7ᵇ. Ib. ד׳ נעוץ וכ׳ the mattock was stuck into the ground on the eve of the Festival. Shebi. V, 6.—Y. Sot. II, 18ᵃ יחפור בדֶקֶל (twice).—Pl. דְּקָרִים, דְּקָרִין. מֵי ד׳ apurgative water, v. דָּקַר a. דֶּקֶל. Sabb. 110ᵃ (differences about spelling דקר׳ or דקל׳); Y. ib. XIV, 14ᶜ; a. e.—Y. Succ. I, 52ᵃ bot. כמין ד׳ like prongs, v. דּוֹקְרָן.
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 10 distinct written forms H1856 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/דָקְרֵ֣/נִי | Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Chronicles 10:4 | 2 |
| דָּקָ֑רוּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Zechariah 12:10 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּדְקְרֵ֥/הוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Judges 9:54 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּדְקֹר֙ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 25:8 | 1 |
| וּ/דְקָרֻ֜/הוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Zechariah 13:3 | 1 |
| וּ/דְקָרֻ֨/נִי֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | 1 Samuel 31:4 | 1 |
| וּ/מְדֻקָּרִ֖ים | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 51:4 | 1 |
| יִדָּקֵ֑ר | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 13:15 | 1 |
| מְדֻקָּרִ֑ים | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 37:10 | 1 |
| מְדֻקָּרִ֔ים | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Lamentations 4:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1856, 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
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 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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
- Numbers 25:8
- Judges 9:54
- 1 Samuel 31:4
- 1 Chronicles 10:4
- Isaiah 13:15
- Jeremiah 51:4
- Lamentations 4:9
- Zechariah 12:10
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.
