זָחַל
to shrink back
‘to shrink back’ 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
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Construct 2 times (67%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2119 appears — 3 distinct verses across 3 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.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Micah 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.
At its core, זחל (zâchal) means “to shrink back.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Deuteronomy (33%), then Job and Micah. Scripture first uses it in Deuteronomy 32:24. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2119 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 33%
- Job 1 verse 33%
- Micah 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 33%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 33%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 33%
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†: Like worms 1×, Serpents 1×, Wherefore i was afraid 1×
- American Standard Version†: Like crawling things 1×, Poison of crawling 1×, Wherefore i held back 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: I was timid 1×, Like reptiles slithering 1×, Vipers that slither 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Crawlers 1×, I was timid 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2119 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2119 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2119 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2119 across 2† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 0 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.
זחל I shrink back, crawl away
זחל II fear, be afraid
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. [ זָחַל ] vb. shrink back, crawl away
II. [ זָחַל ] vb. fear, be afraid —only Qal Jb 32:6
— 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.
זָחַל
- (b. h.)
- 1. to creep.
- 2. to flow, run. זוֹחֲלִים, זוֹחֲלִין running waters, opp. to נוטפין dripping water (collected rain water &c.). Mikv. V, 5 הז׳ במעין running waters are like a well (for levitical purposes). Ib. נוטפין שעשאן ז׳ collected rain water which was made running (by causing an overflow into a channel). Eduy. VII, 3, sq. Sabb. 65ᵇ; a. e.—Y. Shebi. IV, end, 35ᶜ משיִזְחֲלוּ מים when the berries are sufficiently developed to yield running drops when squeezed, v. גָּרַע II. [Num. R. s. 13, beg. וזוחלות; Yalk. Cant. 988 זוחלת, read זולח׳, v. זָלַח.]
- to let collected water run into a channel. Mikv. V, 5 אין מַזְחִילִין בו you must not use it for &c.
זְחַל I
- 1. to creep. Targ. Jer. XLVI, 22; a. e.
- 2. to flow. Targ. Ps. CXLVII, 18 Ms. (ed. זלח׳, h. text יזלו). [Targ. II Esth. I, 2 זחלין בוסמ׳, read זלחין, v. preced.]
- to let run off, to empty (by opening the spicket). Y. Ab. Zar. IV, 44ᵃ bot. עד דתְזַחֲלוּן גובה until ye shall have emptied the pit.
זְחַל II
- (cmp. זחח, צהל) to be bright, brighten up. Y. Snh. XI, 30ᵇ top; Koh. R. to VIII, 1; Pesik. Par., p. 37ᵇ ותלין (corr. acc.); Yalk. Koh. 977 וחלין (corr. acc.).
זַחַל
- (preced.) zaḥal, name of a species of locusts born without legs. Tosef. Ḥull. III (IV), 25. Ḥull. 65ᵇ, v. אִסְקְרָא.
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 3 distinct written forms H2119 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| זָחַ֥לְתִּי | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Job 32:6 | 1 |
| זֹחֲלֵ֥י | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Deuteronomy 32:24 | 1 |
| כְּ/זֹחֲלֵ֣י | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Micah 7:17 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2119, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
