זָמַר
to prune
‘to prune’ is one of 3 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”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- 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.
Every verse where H2168 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 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.
Isaiah
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.
זמר (zâmar) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to prune.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. It clusters heavily in Leviticus, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Leviticus 25:3. Read the stem: it spans 2 stems, including Qal and Niphal. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2168 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.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 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 →
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) 2 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 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).
- King James Version: Prune 1×, Shall not be pruned 1×, Thou shalt prune 1×
- American Standard Version: Prune 1×, Shall not be pruned 1×, Thou shalt prune 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Or prune 1×, Prune 1×, Pruned 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be pruned 1×, Prune 1×, Will 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2168 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2168 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2168 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2168 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 2 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.
Qal
- Impf. 2 ms. תִּזְמֹר Lv 25:3, 4 of pruning a vineyard (כֶּרֶם; H). e.g. Leviticus 25:3
Niphal
- Impf. יִזָּמֵר Is 5:6 be pruned, subj. כֶּרֶם (‖ יֵעָדֵר). e.g. Isaiah 5:6
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
vb. trim, prune (NH id.; relation to √ I. obscure)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זמר (zâmar) (H2167) — to sing.
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.
זָמַר I
- (b. h.) to nip; to prune; to cut. Sabb. 73ᵇ זוֹמֵר וצריך וכ׳ if one trims a tree (on the Sabbath) for making use of the wood. Snh. 26ᵃ כהן וזומר (not וזמר) a priest is he, and he prunes the vine (in the sabbatical year)!; a. fr.
- to be pruned, trnsf. to be checked, unnerved, defeated. Cant. R. to II, 12 (ref. to זמיר ib.) הגיע זמנה של ערלה שתִּזָּמֵר the time for pruning the preputium (circumcision) has come (v. Ex. R. s. 19); הגיע … שיִזָּמֵרוּ the time has come for the Egyptians to be checked; Pesik. Haḥod., p. 50ᵃ; Pesik. R. s. 15.—Lev. R. s. 9, beg. Akhan is named Zimri (I Chr. II, 6, cmp. with Josh. VII, 24) שנִזְמְרוּ … על ידו because through him the Israelites were unnerved (Josh. VII, 5); a. e. e.g. 1 Chronicles 2:6
זְמַר
- Af. אַזְמֵיר same. Y. Shebi. IV, 35ᵃ חמא חד אַ׳ וכ׳ (not איז׳) saw one prune &c. (in the Sabbatical year).
זָמַר II
- to tingle, make music, sing. V. זֶמֶר.
- 1. to sing one’s praise. Cant. R. to II, 16 הוא זִמְּרַנִי … זִמַּרְתִּיו (or זְמָרַנִי, זְמַרְתִּיו) He praised me, and I &c.—Gen. R. s. 91, end (expl. מזמרת, Gen. XLIII, 11) דברים שהן מְזַמְּרִין וכ׳ things which men praise all over the world. e.g. Genesis 43:11
- 2. to review a lesson in recitative chant (v. זִמְרָה). Snh. 99ᵇ top זַמֵּר בכל יום chant every day; Tosef. Ohol. XVI, 8 זַ׳ בי תדירה זַ׳ (the Law says) review me steadily &c.; ib. Par. IV (III), 7; cmp. גְּמָרָא.
זְמַר ²
- Pa. זַמֵּיר same,
- 1. to sing. Targ. Ps. XVIII, 50; a. e.—Sot. 48ᵃ זַמְּרי גברי וכ׳ when men sing and women respond.
- 2. to sing a satire, deride. Targ. Lam. III, 14.
*זָמַר III
- , Hif. הִזְמִיר (cmp. זְמוֹרָא) to look bluish. Y’lamd. to Num. XXV, 14, quot. in Ar. (play on זִמְרִי) עד שה׳ בשרו כביצה מוזרת until his flesh (through his lewdness) had the color of a smashed (rotten) egg; (cmp. Tanḥ. Pinḥ. 2, Num. R. s. 21, beg., Snh. 82ᵇ—where our w. is omitted).
זֶמֶר I
- (זָמַר II) music, song; כלי ז׳ (or sub. כלי) musical instrument. Sot. 48ᵃ בארבעה מיני ז׳ to the music of four instruments. Y. ib. VII, 21ᶜ top לעז לז׳ Greek is adapted for song; Y. Meg. I, 71ᵇ bot.—Snh. 101ᵃ ועושה אותו כמין ז׳ and treats it (a verse of Song of Songs) like a (secular) song; Yalk. Prov. 953; a. fr.
זֶמֶר II
- (זָמַר I; cmp. זמרה, Gen. XLIII, 11) fruits, (grapes &c.), dessert. Y. Pes. X, 37ᵈ bot. (expl. אפיקומין) מיני ז׳ various dessert fruits (Bab. ib. 119ᵇ תמרים וכ׳; Tosef. ib. X, 11 אגוזים וכ׳). e.g. Genesis 43:11
זַמָּר
- (זָמַר I) musician, singer. Kel. XVI, 7 מרכוף של ז׳, v. מַרְכּוֹף. Yalk. Lam. 1001.
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 H2168 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִזָּמֵר֙ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 5:6 | 1 |
| תִזְמֹֽר | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Leviticus 25:4 | 1 |
| תִּזְמֹ֣ר | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Leviticus 25:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2168, 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
- זמיר zâmîyr H2158 song
- זמר zemer H2169 wild goat
- זמר zᵉmâr H2170 music
- זמרה zimrâh H2172 song
- זמרת zimrâth H2176 song of praise
- מזמור mizmôwr H4210 psalm
Derived from this word
- זמורה zᵉmôwrâh H2156 branch
- זמיר zâmîyr H2159 pruning
- זמר zâmar H2167 to sing
- זמרה zimrâh H2173 choice fruits
- מזמרה mazmêrâh H4211 pruning knife
- מזמרה mᵉzammᵉrâh H4212 snuffers
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 → Showing 4 of 15 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). 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.
