זִו
Zif
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Zif’ 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H2099 appears — 2 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
1 Kings 2 verses
- 1 Kings 6:1 זִ֗ו n Proper It happened in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of Yahweh.
- 1 Kings 6:37 זִֽו n Proper In the fourth year was the foundation of the house of Yahweh laid, in the month Ziv.
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.
At its core, זו (Ziv) means “Zif.” With only 2 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. The word gravitates to 1 Kings (100%). It first appears in 1 Kings 6:1. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2099 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Kings 2 verses 100%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 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).
- King James Version: Zif 2×
- American Standard Version: Ziv 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ziv 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ziv 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2099 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2099 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2099 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2099 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses 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.
- Zif = "brightness"
- name of the 2nd month of the year, corresponding to April-May
Word origin
appar. n.pr. of 2nd month, = c. April–May, named as month of beginning the temple-building; בְּחֹדֶשׁ זִו הוּא הַחֹדֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִי 1 K 6:1 = בְּיֶרַח זִ֑ו v 37; 𝔊B v 1 has simply ἐν μηνὶ τῷ δευτέρῳ, v 37 (in 𝔊 v 4) ἐν μηνὶ Νεισῷ καὶ τῷ δευτέρῳ μηνί; 𝔊 codd. ἐν μηνὶ Ζιου μηνὶ τῷ δευτέρῳ; 𝔊L (only v 37) ἐν δευτέρῳ μηνί, ἐν μηνὶ Ζιου;—(si vera l. comp. perhaps Aramaic זִיו ܙܝܺܘܳܐ brightness, freshness, so Biblical Aramaic Dn 2:31 +; cf. 𝔗 יֶרַח זִיו נִיצָנַיָּא month of brightness of flowers; Assyrian zîmu, DlPr 152 f. cf. NöZMG 1886, 732; Thes al. der. זִו, זִיו (= זְהִיו) from זהה in sense be bright, splendid, etc., cf. Arabic زَهَا increase, thrive (of seed-produce), زَهْوٌ a beautiful and bright, or fresh, plant; Aramaic זְהָא, adj. זָהוֹהָא haughty, proud; ܙܗܳܐ glory, boast, be magnificent; yet cf. Ol§ 174 ad fin.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: probably from an unused root meaning to be prominent
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.
זֶה
- (b. h.) this, that. Men. 53ᵇ יבא זה וכ׳ let this one come and receive this &c.; זה זה משה ‘this one’ that means Moses; זאת זו התורה ‘this’—that means the Law. Gen. R. s. 4 לגיון זה this legion; a. v. fr.—זֶהוּ = זה הוא, this is. Sabb. 40ᵇ הפשרו זהו בישולו (also זה הוא) warming it is the cooking of it, v. הֶפְשֵׁר; a. fr.—Gitt. VIII, 4 אי זֹהו Y. ed. (Mish. אֵיזֶהוּ); a. v. fr.
זוּ
- , v. זֶה
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 2 distinct written forms H2099 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| זִ֗ו | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 6:1 | 1 |
| זִֽו | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 6:37 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2099, 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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Zif). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Brightness; splendour; i.e., "the flower month," mentioned only in 1 Kings 6:1, 37, as the "second month." It was called Iyar by the later Jews. (See MONTH.)
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(1 Kings 6:1) [Month]
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
this or that; brightness; comeliness
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
