הֵן
behold
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
- Conjunction
- A joining word (e.g. “and,” “but”) linking words or clauses.
Grammatical forms
- Conjunction 17 times (94%)
- Particle, Demonstrative 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 18 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2006 appears — 12 distinct verses across 2 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.
Ezra 4 verses
- Ezra 4:13 הֵ֣ן conj Be it known now to the king that if this city is built, and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and in the end it will be hurtful to the kings.
- Ezra 4:16 הֵ֣ן conj We inform the king that, if this city be built, and the walls finished, by this means you shall have no portion beyond the River.
- Ezra 5:17 הֵ֧ן הֵ֣ן conj conj Now therefore, if it seem good to the king, let there be search made in the king's treasure-house, which is there at Babylon, whether it be so, that a decree was made of Cyrus the king to build this house of God at Jerusalem; and let the king send his pleasure to us concerning this matter.
- Ezra 7:26 הֵ֤ן הֵ֣ן הֵן conj conj conj Whoever will not do the law of your God, and the law of the king, let judgment be executed on him with all diligence, whether it be to death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to imprisonment.
Daniel 8 verses
- Daniel 2:5 הֵ֣ן conj The king answered the Chaldeans, The thing is gone from me: if you don't make known to me the dream and the interpretation of it, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill.
- Daniel 2:6 וְ/הֵ֨ן לָהֵ֕ן conj + ptcl dem conj But if you show the dream and the interpretation of it, you shall receive of me gifts and rewards and great honor: therefore show me the dream and the interpretation of it.
- Daniel 2:9 הֵן לָהֵ֗ן conj conj But if you don't make known to me the dream, there is but one law for you; for you have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, until the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that you can show me the interpretation of it.
- Daniel 3:15 הֵ֧ן וְ/הֵן֙ conj conj + conj Now if you are ready whenever you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe, and all kinds of music to you fall down and worship the image which I have made, [well]: but if you don't worship, you shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that god that shall deliver you out of my hands?
- Daniel 3:17 הֵ֣ן conj If it be [so], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
- Daniel 3:18 וְ/הֵ֣ן conj + conj But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.
- Daniel 4:27 הֵ֛ן conj Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you, and break off your sins by righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor; if there may be a lengthening of your tranquillity.
- Daniel 5:16 הֵן֩ conj But I have heard of you, that you can give interpretations, and dissolve doubts; now if you can read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation of it, you shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about your neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.
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.
“behold” is the headline sense of the Hebrew word הן (hên). More than two-thirds of its appearances fall in Daniel. It appears 12 verses across 2 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Ezra 4:13, it enters the text early. Related forms include הן, הנה and להן. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2006 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
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 12 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 100%
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†: If 10×, Or 2×, Whether 2×
- American Standard Version†: If 8×, Or 2×, That 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: If 11×, Therefore 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: If 12×, Whether 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2006 across 16† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2006 across 16† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2006 across 17† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2006 across 18† 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.
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 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.
הן I on. 3 pl.fem., often in NH, in Bibl. Heb. only with prefixes, בָּהֵן, etc.
הן II
- a. Gn 3:22 הֵן הָאָדָם הָיָה behold, the man is become as one of us, & now lest, etc., 4:14 behold, thou hast driven me forth etc., 11:6; 15:3; 19:34; 27:11; 29:7; 30:34 (nearly = yea), Ex 5:5; 6:12, 30 Lv 10:18, 19 Nu 17:27 Dt 5:21 (in prose only in Pent. (23 times) and Ez 18:4 in this usage); in poetry, used more freely, but chiefly in Is 2 & Jb,—Nu 23:9, 24 (Balaam) Is 23:13; 32:1; 33:7 ψ 51:7, 8; 68:34; 78:20; 139:4 Pr 11:31 (stating the premiss to a conclusion introduced by אַף כִּי, q.v.), 24:12: elsewhere (except in senses b, c) only in Is 2 (23 times) & Jb (31 times), as Is 40:15(×2); 41:11, 24, 29; 50:1, 2, 9(×2), 11 Jb 4:18; 15:15; 25:5 (in these three passages before אַף or אַף כִּי), 9:11, 12 etc. (v. supr.). e.g. Genesis 3:22
- b. as a hypoth. part., propounding a possibility, if (so NH Biblical Aramaic, Mand. Palm. (ZMG 1888, 404); on the contr. Syriac ܐܶܢ, Pal. 𝔗 אִין, also Palm. (ib. p. 415), Arabic إِنْ, with א), a special application or development of the use a: Ex 4:1 והן לא יאמינו לי and behold (= and suppose) they will not believe me?, Lv 10:8; 25:20 and if (וְכִי) ye say, What shall we eat the 7th year? הֵן לֹא נִזְרַע behold, we shall not sow etc. (i.e. supposing we do not sow), Is 54:15 Jb 9:12; 13:15; 40:23 2 Ch 7:13(×2) (v 13b וְאִם); stating ground on which a qu. is based, Ex 8:22 (וְלֹא = הֲלֹא), Je 3:1 Hg 2:12 (v. הֵן Aramaic b). e.g. Exodus 4:1
- c. if, whether, in an indirect question, Je 2:10 רְאוּ הֵן הָֽיְתָה כָּזֹאת (but Gr הֲנִהְיְתָה); cf. אִם 2 b, and הֵן Aramaic c. e.g. Jeremiah 2:10
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. pron. 3 pl.fem., often in NH, in Bibl. Heb. only with prefixes, בָּהֵן, etc.: see under הֵמָּה 8 d.
II. (הֶן־ †Nu 23:9, 24 Jb 8:19, 20; 13:1; 26:14; 33:6, 12, 29; 36:5, 22, 26; הֵן־ Jb 13:15; 36:30 41:1 +) demonstr. adv. or interj. lo! behold (on etym. v. הִנֵּה), less widely used than הִנֵּה, and in prose mostly confined to calling attention to some fact upon which action is to be taken, or a conclusion based;
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from הן (hên) (H2005) — behold.
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.
הוּא ²
- , ch. same. Targ. Ex. I, 16; a. v. fr.—היא הדא, v. דָּא.—Y. Shebi. VII, 37ᶜ top בהוא אתר (R. S. to Shebi. VII, 3 בההוא אתרא) in the same place.—כל דהו whatsoever, v. preced. Arakh. 2ᵃ נפשות כל דהו human beings of any nature, v. כָּל.—Y. Kil. VI, 31ᵇ top כהיא דאמר וכ׳ (in Babli כי הא) as (that which) R. … said.—Pl. הֵן (perhaps only in Hebr. phrases); הִינוּן, הִינִין. Targ. Y. Ex. I, 10; Ib. 19 (O. אינ׳); a. fr.—With prefix ה: הַהוּא, הַהִיא. Targ. Y. Ex. XXI, 20; a. fr.—In Talmud frequ. used to introduce a case. Pes. 3ᵇ ה׳ ארמאה ד־ it occurred that a gentile &c. Keth. 78ᵇ ה׳ איתתא ד־ the case came up of a woman that &c.; a. v. fr.—ה׳ גברא, ה׳ איתתא frequ. euphemistically for myself, thyself (to avoid ominous speech or curse). Y. Maas. Sh. IV, 55ᵇ bot. אביו דה׳ ג׳ thy father. Ib.ᶜ top חמית ה׳ א׳ I saw; בעלה דה׳ א׳ thy husband; a. v. fr.—With prefix ד־: דהוא, דהיא, contr. דּוּ, דִּי, v. דְּ־ a. דּוּ.—With prefixed prep. בְּהוֹן, בּוֹן, לְהוֹן, לוֹן.
הֵן
- they, pl. of הוּא, הִיא.
הֵן ²
- (b. h. הֵן)
- 1. here is, behold. הִינָּם, הִינָּן behold, they are. Ned. V, 6 (48ᵃ) והי׳ לפניך אלא וכ׳ Bab. ed. (Mish. ואינן; Y. ed. והן בפניך עד) and behold they are before thee (thine), but only in order that my father &c.
- 2. (introducing a question or exclamation) how?, indeed! Y. Shek. I, 45ᵈ bot. הן נקרא ולא וכ׳ can we, indeed, read this and not feel ashamed? (Bab. ed. הניקרא, marginal correct. Ms. M. הן נק׳).
- 3. if. Dan. II, 5, sq.; a. fr.—הן—הן whether—or. Ezra VII, 26.—B. Bath. VII, 2 הן חסר הן יתר whether it be less (than a Beth Kor) or more. Ib. 3; a. e. e.g. Daniel 2:5
- 4. yes (cmp. אִין I). B. Mets. 49ᵃ, v. הִין II Mekh. Yithro s. 4 answer על לאו לאו ועל הן הן no to a prohibition and yes to a positive command. Ib. s. 5 ה׳ וה׳ yes, indeed; a fr.—Ned. 11ᵃ, a. fr. מכלל לאו אתה שומע הן from the negative we derive the affirmative by implication; Y. ib. I, end, 37ᵃ, a. e. ממשמע לאו וכ׳. Men. X, 3 (65ᵃ).
הָן
- 1. ה׳ ד־ he who. Targ. Prov. XIX, 1, a. fr. in Ms., ed. Lag. הֲווֹ q. v.—Pesik. Aḥaré, p. 169ᵇ, v. דְּחוּכָא; a. e.
- 2. this one, that one. Y. Meg. I, 72ᵃ היך … להן וכ׳ (Y. Succ. III, 54ᵃ top לדין), v. הֵיךְ. Y. Kil. IX, 32ᶜ top [read:] מה הן שאל להן וכ׳; Y. Keth. XII, 35ᵇ top מה הין דשאיל להון (corr. acc.) from all that this one asked that one &c.; a. fr.
- 3. what? Y. B. Mets. II, 8ᶜ לְהָן, v. אֲהָן.
- 4. where (relat.), where? Esth. R. to I, 12 [read:] הן דליסטאה מקפח וכ׳ where the robber waylays, there he is executed. Y. Snh. I, 19ᵃ top; Y. Ned. VI, 40ᵃ bot. הן דמטא מטא where he came to, he came to (and his order was obeyed). Y. Kil. IX, 32ᶜ bot. [read:] להן דאשתלחית מינסבינן to the place whither I was sent to take them; Y. Keth. XII, 35ᵇ להון דשלחית (read דאשתלחית). Gen. R. s. 78, v. בְּרָא. Y. Ber. II, 5ᶜ bot. להן ייזיל whither shall he go? Ib. II, 5ᵃ top מן הן הוא where is he from?; a. fr.—Pl. הַנְהוּ, הַנֵּי, הַנָּךְ those, these. Targ. Esth. I, 10; a. e.—Tam. 32ᵇ. B. Mets. 117ᵃ, v. הַהוּא.—Gitt. 6ᵃ הנך … דהני והני בדהנך וכ׳ those (the inhabitants of Ctesiphon) know the signatures of these (of Ardshir), but the latter do not know &c. Bets. 10ᵇ; a. v. fr.—*Fem. pl. הַנָּן. Y. Bets. V, 63ᵇ top רבנין … מפרשין לה׳ the Rabbis of Cæsarea report these (controversies) more explicitly (stating the opinion of each by name; Y. Pes. VIII, 36ᵃ top מפרשין להון).—הני מילי (abbrev. הנ"מ) these words (have been said), i.e. this is the case only &c. Ber. 21ᵃ bot. (הוה אמינא) הנ"מ יחיד ויחיד I might have thought this refers only to &c.—Ib. 15ᵃ והנ"מ לק"ש but this applies only to &c.; a. v. fr.—מנא הני מילי, v. מְנָא II.—Emphatic. הַנָּא, הַנָּה. Gen. R. s. 87 הנה טבא וכ׳ is this (slave) good? Is the omen favorable?; Yalk. ib. 145 הא טב וכ׳ (corr. acc.).
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 H2006 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הֵ֣ן | Conjunction | Daniel 2:5 | 6 |
| הֵ֧ן | Conjunction | Daniel 3:15 | 2 |
| הֵן | Conjunction | Daniel 2:9 | 2 |
| הֵ֛ן | Conjunction | Daniel 4:27 | 1 |
| הֵ֤ן | Conjunction | Ezra 7:26 | 1 |
| הֵן֩ | Conjunction | Daniel 5:16 | 1 |
| וְ/הֵ֣ן | Conjunction | Daniel 3:18 | 1 |
| וְ/הֵ֨ן | Particle, Demonstrative | Daniel 2:6 | 1 |
| וְ/הֵן֙ | Conjunction | Daniel 3:15 | 1 |
| לָהֵ֕ן | Conjunction | Daniel 2:6 | 1 |
| לָהֵ֗ן | Conjunction | Daniel 2:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2006, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
