זָהַר
to teach
‘to teach’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- 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.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H2094 appears in the Book of Daniel — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Daniel
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.
זהר (zâhar) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to teach.” It clusters heavily in Ezekiel, which alone accounts for 63% of its uses. It turns up in 19 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Exodus 18:20. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Hiphil and Niphal. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2094 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 →
- 19
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 19 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,368
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,368 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 19 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ezekiel 12 verses 63%
- Ecclesiastes 2 verses 11%
- Exodus 1 verse 5%
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 19 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 13 verses · 68%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 26%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 5%
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†: Warn 4×, Nevertheless if thou warn 2×, Warned 2×
- American Standard Version†: Warn 3×, Give them warning from me 2×, Warned 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Warn 6×, Heed the warning 2×, Warn him 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Warn 5×, Be warned 2×, Warn him 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2094 across 22† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H2094 across 22† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 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 H2094 across 22† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H2094 across 25† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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.
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.
זהר I be light, shining
Hiphil
- . intrans. (late) send out light, shine
זהר II
Hiphil
- . instruct, teach, warn
Niphal
- . be instructed, admonished, warned
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. [ זָהַר ] vb. be light, shining
II. [ זָהַר ] vb. only Hiph., Niph.
— 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.
זָהֵר
- 1. to shine; v. זָהוֹר, זְהוֹרִית.
- 2. to look out, beware, be strict (corresp. to b. h. שָׁמַר); v. זָהִיר.
- to brighten. Midr. Till. to Ps. XC, 16 וזִהֲּרוֹ and brightened his countenance.
- (= b. h. הִשָּׁמֵר) to be careful, be strict; to beware, take heed. Ber. 8ᵇ הִזָּהֲרוּ בורידין be careful to cut the jugular veins, v. וָרִיד. Ib. ה׳ בזקן וכ׳ beware of disregarding an old man who &c. Ned. 81ᵃ ה׳ בבני עניים וכ׳ take heed of (do not disregard) the children of the poor; a. fr.
- to caution, forewarn, esp. to prohibit by a special law, v. אַזְהָרָה. Yeb. 22ᵇ, a. e. אין מַזְהִירִין מן הדין a law derived from analogy (v. דִּין) is not considered a specified law on which punishment can be executed after due warning. Zeb. 106ᵇ, a. e. לא ענש אא"כ ה׳ the Bible text did not pronounce punishment without having expressed a warning (‘thou shalt not’ &c.); a. fr.
- to be forewarned, to be forbidden from doing (by a special law). Yeb. 84ᵇ לא הוּזְהֲרוּ וכ׳ there is no specific law prohibiting women of legitimate birth to marry men of illegitimate birth.—Part. מוּזְהָר, f. מוּזְהֶרֶת. Ib. מלמד שהאשה מ׳ (the repeated expression, ‘they shall not take’, Lev. XXI, 7) intimates that woman is included with man in the prohibition; ib. כל היכא דהוא מ׳ היא מ׳ wherever the man is cautioned not to marry, the woman (in the same social relation) is cautioned; a. fr. [Ib. היא לא מזדהרא, read: מוזהרת.] e.g. Leviticus 21:7
זְהַר
- 1. so shine, bloom. Targ. Job XXII, 28 (ed. Wil. יַזְהַר Af.). Targ. Hos. XIV, 6; a. e.
- 2. to look out, guard.—Part. pass. זְהִיר. Ḥag. 23ᵃ מִיזְהַר זהיר בהו he guards them (from levitical impurity). Ḥull. 107ᵇ דזְהִיר he is careful (not to touch), contrad. to זריז taking precaution. Y. Ber. V, 9ᵃ bot. זְהִירָא לה watches it (the cloak). Y. Ab. Zar. III, 41ᵃ bot. לא הוינא ז׳ לך was I not on my guard against thee?; a. fr.
- 1. to emit light, to glisten. Targ. Zech. IX, 15.
- 2. to caution. Targ. Cant. V, 2.
- 1. to give light, shine. Targ. Is. IX, 1; a. e.
- 2. to explain. Targ. Ex. XVIII, 20.
- 3. to caution. Targ. Ez. III, 18; a. e.—Snh. 66ᵃ bot. דילמא אקודש א׳ וכ׳ perhaps in saying ‘thou shalt not curse Elohim’ (Ex. XXII, 27) the Law gave warning with regard to holy Elohim (God), but not with regard to secular Elohim (authorities)? e.g. Exodus 22:27
- 1. to take heed, beware. Targ. Y. Ex. X, 28; a. e.—Ab. Zar. 28ᵃ, v. זִיקָא I. Ib. 12ᵇ, v. שַׁבְרִירִי; a. fr.
- 2. to watch. Y. Ber. V, 9ᵃ bot. מִזְדַּהֲרָא ליה was watching it. B. Bath. 29ᵃ תרתי … מִזְדְּהַר the first two or three years man takes care of the deed. Ib. הוה מִזְדַּהַרְנָא וכ׳ I should have taken care &c.; a. e.
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 18 distinct written forms H2094 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2094, 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 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 19 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.
