דֶּ֫שֶׁא
grass
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.
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1877 appears in the Book of Genesis — 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.
Genesis
- Genesis 1:11 דֶּ֔שֶׁא n c ms God said, "Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the earth," and it was so.
- Genesis 1:12 דֶּ֠שֶׁא n c ms The earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind: and God saw that it was good.
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.
“grass” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun דשא (desheʼ). Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 1:11. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 15 verses — uncommon. Related forms include דשא and דתא. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1877 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 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 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 47%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 33%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 20%
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: Grass 4×, Herb 3×, Tender grass 2×
- American Standard Version: Tender grass 4×, Grass 3×, Herb 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Vegetation 3×, Green shoots 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Grass 3×, Vegetation 3×, Green 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1877 across 15 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 H1877 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H1877 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H1877 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- grass, new grass, green herb, vegetation, young
Word origin
n.m. Is 15:6 grass (NH id., Assyrian dišu, herb, Lyon Sargontexte 69; Sab. דתֿא fresh shoots DHMZMG 1875, 597 = springtime CISiv. p. 11; Aramaic דִּתְאָה, ܬܰܕܐܴܐ (cf. LagBN 130))—ד׳ abs. Gn 1:11 + 13 times—acc. cogn. תַּדְשֵׁא Gn 1:11; cf. v 12 (in both, produced by earth); springing out of earth 2 S 23:4; of a second crop of grass Pr 27:25 (opp. חָצִיר); caused to spring forth by God לְהַצְמִיחַ מֹצָא דֶ֑שֶׁא Jb 38:27; refreshed by rain Dt 32:2; נְאוֹת ד׳ ψ 23:2; as food of wild ass Jb 6:5; as failing (withered) Is 15:6; lacking for animals Je 14:5; וִירַק דֶּשֶׁא sim. of weakness 2 K 19:26 (‖ עֵשֶׂב שָׂדֶה) = Is 37:27; of transitoriness (withering) ψ 37:2 (יֶרֶק ד׳), of growth and prosperity, Is 66:14.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from דשא (dâshâʼ) (H1876) — to sprout.
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.
דֶּשֶׁא
- (b. h.) tender grass, herbage.—Pl. דְּשָׁאִים, דְּשָׁאִין herbs. Ber. VI, 1. Ex. R. s. 17, beg. Ḥull. 60ᵃ. Y. Kil. I, 27ᵇ top. R. Hash. 11ᵃ what month is it שהארץ מוציאה ד׳ וכ׳ in which the earth produces fresh green while the trees are full of fruits?—Ib. הארץ מליאה ד׳ the ground is covered with herbs.
דַּשָּׁא
- (= דרשא, Sam. דרשה; דרש, cmp. also דּוּשׁ) entrance, door-way (v. דְּרִיסָה); door. Targ. O. Gen. XIX, 6 דַּשָׁא ed. Berl. (oth. ed. a. Y. דָּשָׁא). Targ. O. Ex. XXI, 6 דַּשָּׁא ed. Berl. (Y. דָּ׳); a. fr.—Ḥull. 52ᵇ, v. אֲחַד. Sabb. 77ᵇ; Keth. 10ᵇ (phonetic etymol.) ד̇ש̇א ד̇רך ש̇ס. Ib. כי עברא לד׳ (as strengthening) as the bolt to a door. Ber. 56ᵃ ד׳ ברייתא דנפל (read דביתאי, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) (I dreamt) that the door of my house fell down; a. fr.—Pl. דַּשִּׁין, דַּשַּׁיָּא, דַּשֵּׁי, דָּ׳. Targ. Job XXXVIII, 8. Targ. O. Deut. III, 5; a. e. [Targ. Esth. I, 6 ודשרין וכ׳, read ודַשִּׁין וכ׳ (or ודַרְשִׁין, v. supra) and there were turning doors of silver.]—Men. 33ᵃ תלי דשי וכ׳ (some ed. דשא) hang the door frames in first.
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 11 distinct written forms H1877 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| דֶּ֔שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 1:11 | 3 |
| דֶ֑שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 6:5 | 2 |
| דֶ֔שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 32:2 | 2 |
| דֶֽשֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 38:27 | 1 |
| דָשָׁ֔ה | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 50:11 | 1 |
| דֶּ֝֗שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 37:2 | 1 |
| דֶּ֠שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 1:12 | 1 |
| דֶּ֥שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 23:4 | 1 |
| דֶּ֭שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 23:2 | 1 |
| דֶּֽשֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 14:5 | 1 |
| כַּ/דֶּ֣שֶׁא | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 66:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1877, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 15 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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
- Genesis 1:11
- Deuteronomy 32:2
- 2 Samuel 23:4
- 2 Kings 19:26
- Job 6:5
- Psalms 23:2
- Proverbs 27:25
- Isaiah 15:6
- Jeremiah 14:5
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.
