הָבַל
to become vain
‘to become vain’ is one of 5 main senses 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: ‘they went after vanity and became vain’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- 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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (40%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Jussive, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1891 appears — 5 distinct verses across 4 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.
2 Kings 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 2:5 וַ/יֶּהְבָּֽלוּ conj + Qal wimpf 3mp thus says Yahweh, What unrighteousness have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?
- Jeremiah 23:16 מַהְבִּלִ֥ים Hiphil ptcp.act mp Thus says Yahweh of Hosts, Don't listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you: they teach you vanity; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of Yahweh.
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.
הבל (hâbal) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to become vain.” With only 5 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. It concentrates in Jeremiah, which alone accounts for 40% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in 2 Kings 17:15. The verb spans 2 stems, from Qal to Hiphil. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1891 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 60%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 40%
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: Are become vain 1×, Became vain 1×, Become not vain 1×
- American Standard Version: Are become vain 1×, Became vain 1×, Become not vain 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Became worthless themselves 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are deluding 1×, Became empty 1×, Do 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1891 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1891 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H1891 across 4 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 H1891 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
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.
Qal
- they went after vanity and became vain
Hiphil
- . cause to become vain (of false prophets) i.e. fill you with vain hopes.
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
הָבַל vb. denom. act emptily, become vain
— 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.
הָבַל
- , Hif. הֶהֱבִיל (cmp. הבב) to be affected by hot air, begin to steam. Sabb. I, 6 (17ᵇ) long enough before the Sabbath כדי שיַהֲבִילוּ for the flax stalks to begin &c.
הֲבַל
- (= b. h. הָבַל, denom. of הַבְלָא)
- 1. to do vain things. Targ. Job XXVII, 12.
- 2. to be wanton, to sport. Targ. Ps. LXII, 11 תְהַבְלוּן ed. Wil. (Bxt. תִתְהַבְּלוּן Ithpa.; ed. Lag. תקבלון, Ms. תתחבלון).
הֶבֶל
- , constr. הֲבֵל or הֲבַל (b. h.)
- 1. breath, vapor, air, heat. Sabb. 88ᵇ בה׳ שבפיהם with the (fiery) breath of their mouths. Ib. 119ᵇ ה׳ תינוקות וכ׳ the breath of school children. Ib. ה׳ שאין בו חטא a sinless breath (of children). Y. Ab. Zar. III, 42ᵈ bot. ה׳ המרחץ וכ׳ the vapor of the bath room is injurious to the teeth. Yeb. 80ᵇ אין בשרו מעלה ה׳ his body (after bathing) does not steam. Pesik. Baḥod. p. 154ᵃ; Lev. R. s. 29 (ref. to Ps. LXII, 10) עד שהן עשויין ה׳ בתוך וכ׳ while they are yet a gas (in the first embryonic stage) …, they are predestined for marital union. Y. Ter. X, 47ᵃ bot. הה׳ כובש the heat (of the fresh bread placed on top of an open wine casket) keeps the evaporations of the wine down. B. Kam. 50ᵇ להַבְלוֹ for injuries suffered through the bad air of the pit (into which the animal fell), opp. to לחבטו injuries arising from knocking against the ground. Koh. R. to I, 2 ה׳ של תנור the hot air of the stove; ה׳ של עליונה the vapor of the topmost pot; Yalk. ib. 966 ה׳ שביעית; a. e.— e.g. Psalms 62:10
- 2. (b. h.) vanity. B. Bath. 16ᵇ תנחומין של ה׳ vain consolations. Koh. R. l. c.; Yalk. l. c. (ref. to Ps. CXLIV, 4) לאיזו ה׳ to what kind of hebel (breath) man is like; a. fr.—Pl. הֲבָלִים. Ib. שבעה ה׳ וכ׳ the seven times that Solomon used the word hebel. Pesik. Baḥod. l. c.; Lev. R. l. c. כל ה׳ וכזבים וכ׳ all the vain things and falsehoods which the Israelites commit. e.g. Psalms 144:4
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 5 distinct written forms H1891 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/יֶּהְבָּ֔לוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 2 Kings 17:15 | 1 |
| וַ/יֶּהְבָּֽלוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 2:5 | 1 |
| מַהְבִּלִ֥ים | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 23:16 | 1 |
| תֶּ֫הְבָּ֥לוּ | Verb, Qal, Jussive, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 62:10 | 1 |
| תֶּהְבָּֽלוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 27:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1891, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
