הָתַל
to mock
‘to mock’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘mock’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘deceive’
- Hophal
- The passive counterpart of the Hiphil (“he was caused to…”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (30%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hophal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 10 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2048 appears — 9 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Exodus 1 verse
Judges 3 verses
- Judges 16:10 הֵתַ֣לְתָּ Hiphil pf 2ms Delilah said to Samson, Behold, you have mocked me, and told me lies: now tell me, Please, with which you might be bound.
- Judges 16:13 הֵתַ֤לְתָּ Hiphil pf 2ms Delilah said to Samson, Hitherto you have mocked me, and told me lies: tell me with which you might be bound. He said to her, If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web.
- Judges 16:15 הֵתַ֣לְתָּ Hiphil pf 2ms She said to him, How can you say, I love you, when your heart is not with me? you have mocked me these three times, and have not told me in which your great strength lies.
1 Kings 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 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.
“to mock” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb התל (hâthal). First canonically at Genesis 31:7, it enters the text early. With 9 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Judges, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. The verb spans 3 stems, from Piel 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 H2048 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 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 9 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 22%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 11%
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†: Another do ye so mock 1×, Behold thou hast mocked 1×, Deal deceitfully 1×
- American Standard Version†: Behold 1×, Deal deceitfully 1×, Deceived 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: You have mocked 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: You have deceived 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2048 across 10† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2048 across 10† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2048 across 10† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2048 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 Hophal (the passive of Hiphil).
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.
התל I
Piel
- deceive, mock, Impf. וַיְהַתֵּל בָּהֶם 1 K 18:27 (secondary formation from תלל Hiph., q.v.; cf. Thes Ol§ 257 f. ad fin. Sta§ 145 e; otherwise Köi 352; v. further sub תלל). e.g. 1 Kings 18:27
התל II
Hiphil
- mock, deceive, trifle with (perhaps akin to Arabic دَلَّ act coquettishly; cf. secondary √ [הָתַל] p. 251);—mock, trifle with, c. ב pers.: Pf. 3 ms. (בִּי) הֵ֫תֶל Gn 31:7 (E), 2 ms. הֵתַ֫לְתָּ Je 16:10, 13, 15; Impf. 3 mpl. יְהָתֵ֫לּוּ Je 9:4, 2 mpl. תְּהָתֵ֫לּוּ Jb 13:9 (on both v. Ges§ 53 q Baerad loc.); Inf. cstr. Jb 13:9 and (abs.) Ex 8:25 (J). e.g. Genesis 31:7
Hophal
- Pf. 3 ms. הוּתַל Is 44:20 a heart (which is deceived.—Vid. [הָחַל], הֲתֻלִים p. 251. e.g. Isaiah 44:20
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
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.
תֵּל
- 1. hill, mound. Meg. 14ᵃ לאחד … תל וכ׳ one had a mound in his field, and another had a trench. Ib. מכור לי תִּילְּךָ sell me thy mound (to fill up my trench). Ber. 30ᵃ; Cant. R. to IV, 4, v. פֶּה. Ib. to V, 11 יכולות … ולעשותו תל they can ruin a world and make it a mound (ruin); a. fr.—Pl. תִּלִּים, תִּלִּין, תִּי׳. Men. 29ᵇ תִּילֵּי ת׳ (later ed. תילין ת׳), v. קוֹץ I; Tanḥ. B’resh. 1; Erub. 21ᵇ. Cant. R. l. c. תילי ת׳ הן they are piles on piles (of ideas), v. קִיץ h.; a. e. e.g. Genesis 1:1
- 2. (cmp. סלסל) lock, curl. —Pl. as ab. Num. R. s. 107 מסודרות ת׳ ת׳; Y. Ned. I, 36ᵈ bot. תילי ת׳, v. קְווּצּוֹת; (Bab. ib. 9ᵇ, a. e. תלתלים); a. e.—תל ארזא, v. אַרְזָא.—[תִּלִּים, תִּלִּין psalms, v. תְּהִלָּה.]
תֵּל ²
- , mound, ruins. Targ. Deut. XIII, 17. Targ. Jer. XLIX, 2; a. e.—Ber. 58ᵇ ביתא … השתא נפל בת׳ (Ms. M. נפל ליה כת׳) the house in which … now lies in ruins (lies like a ruin).
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 9 distinct written forms H2048 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הֵתַ֣לְתָּ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Judges 16:10 | 2 |
| הֵ֣תֶל | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 31:7 | 1 |
| הֵתַ֤לְתָּ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Judges 16:13 | 1 |
| הָתֵ֔ל | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Exodus 8:29 | 1 |
| הוּתַ֖ל | Verb, Hophal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 44:20 | 1 |
| וַ/יְהַתֵּ֧ל | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 18:27 | 1 |
| יְהָתֵ֔לּוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 9:5 | 1 |
| כְּ/הָתֵ֥ל | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Job 13:9 | 1 |
| תְּהָתֵ֥לּוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 13:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2048, 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 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
