זָנָב
tail
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
3 verses where H2180 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Isaiah. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
- Isaiah 9:14 וְ/זָנָ֛ב conj + n c ms Therefore Yahweh will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm-branch and rush, in one day.
- Isaiah 9:15 הַ/זָּנָֽב ptcl def.art + n c ms The elder and the honorable man, he is the head; and the prophet who teaches lies, he is the tail.
- Isaiah 19:15 וְ/זָנָ֖ב conj + n c ms Neither shall there be for Egypt any work, which head or tail, palm-branch or rush, may do.
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.
The Hebrew noun זנב centers on the idea of “tail.” Debuting at Exodus 4:4, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 9 verses across 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Isaiah (44%), then Deuteronomy and Exodus. It shares a root with זנב. Dig into 9-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2180 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.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Isaiah 4 verses 44%
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 22%
- Exodus 1 verse 11%
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) 5 verses · 56%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 33%
- 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).
- King James Version: Tail 6×, Tails 2×
- American Standard Version: Tail 5×, Tails 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Tail 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Tail 7×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2180 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H2180 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H2180 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2180 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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
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.
- 1.
- a. tail of fox Ju 15:4(×3), of serpent Ex 4:4 (J), of hippopot. Jb 40:17; e.g. Judges 15:4
- b. fig. of common people, opp. to rulers Is 9:13; 19:15 (in both, רֹאשׁ וְזָנָב, ‖ כִּפָּה וְאַגְמוֹן; Is 9:14 is incorrect gloss); of subject-people (opp. רֹאשׁ) Dt 28:13, 44. e.g. Isaiah 9:13
- 2. end, stump (of firebrand, אוּד) in metaph. Is 7:4. e.g. Isaiah 7:4
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
n.m. Ju 15:4 tail, also (fig.) end, stump (NH id., Assyrian zibbatu HomNS 368, Ethiopic ዘነብ Arabic ذَنَبٌ, Aramaic ܕܽܘܢܒܳܐ, דּוּנְבָּא, דַּנְבָּא)—ז׳ abs. Ju 15:4(×2) + 5 times; sf. זְנָבוֹ Jb 40:17; pl. זְנָבוֹת Ju 15:4; cstr. זַנְבוֹת Is 7:4;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זנב (zânab) (H2179) — to cut off.
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.
זָנָב
- (b. h.) attachment, tail. Bekh. VI, 9 זְנַב הגדי the tail of a kid; a. fr.—Yoma 41ᵇ זְ׳ לשון the tail-end (fringes) of the band. Erub. 18ᵃ (ref. to צלע, Gen. II, 22) ז׳ it means the tail (with which Adam was originally created). Kil. IV, 6 ואחת יוצאה ז׳ and one vine projects like a tail. Ukts. I, 3 ז׳ של אשכול the skeleton of the cluster of grapes (the thin branches), opp. to יד, the stem; a. fr.—Trnsf. the last, least. Ab. IV, 15, v. אֲרִי.—Euphem. membrum virile. Tanḥ. Ki Thetsé 10 (expl. ויזנב, Deut. XXV, 18) הכה אותן מכת ז׳ Amalek mutilated them by cutting off &c.; Pesik. Zakh., p. 27ᵃ; Pesik. R. s. 12; Num. R. s. 13; v. זְמוֹרָה.—Denom. e.g. Genesis 2:22
זִנֵּב
- Pi. (b. h.)
- 1. (v. Ukts. I, 3 quot. in preced. w.) to cut off the extreme branches of the vine, to trim. Shebi. IV, 6 המְזַנֵּב בגפנים he who trims grape-vines.—Trnsf. ז׳ באשכולות [to thin the clusters,] to diminish the scholars by persecution (v. אֶשְׁכּוֹל). Gen. R. s. 42; Lev. R. s. 11; a. e.
- 2. to attack, force a passage. Gen. R. s. 74 בקש לזַנְּבָן Joab wanted to force his passage through their territory; Yalk. Sam. 147.
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 11 distinct written forms H2180 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בִּ/זְנָב֑/וֹ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 4:4 | 1 |
| הַ/זְּנָב֖וֹת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 15:4 | 1 |
| הַ/זָּנָֽב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 9:15 | 1 |
| וְ/זָנָ֖ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 19:15 | 1 |
| וְ/זָנָ֛ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 9:14 | 1 |
| זְנָב֣/וֹ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Job 40:17 | 1 |
| זַנְב֧וֹת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 7:4 | 1 |
| זָנָ֔ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 15:4 | 1 |
| זָנָב֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 15:4 | 1 |
| לְ/זָנָ֔ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 28:13 | 1 |
| לְ/זָנָֽב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 28:44 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2180, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 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.
