זְנוּת
harlotry
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
- 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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H2184 appears in the Book of Jeremiah — 3 distinct verses. 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.
Jeremiah
- Jeremiah 3:2 בִּ/זְנוּתַ֖יִ/ךְ prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 2fs Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see; where have you not been lain with? By the ways have you sat for them, as an Arabian in the wilderness; and you have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness.
- Jeremiah 3:9 זְנוּתָ֔/הּ n c fs cs + sfx pers 3fs It happened through the lightness of her prostitution, that the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with stocks.
- Jeremiah 13:27 זְנוּתֵ֔/ךְ n c fs cs + sfx pers 2fs I have seen your abominations, even your adulteries, and your neighing, the lewdness of your prostitution, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, Jerusalem! you will not be made clean; how long shall it yet be?
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 זנות centers on the idea of “harlotry.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “whoredom” in the King James Version, “prostitution” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It appears 9 verses across 4 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Jeremiah (33%), then Ezekiel and Hosea. Its earliest occurrence is Numbers 14:33. 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 H2184 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.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
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) 8 verses · 89%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 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: Whoredom 5×, Whoredoms 2×
- American Standard Version: Whoredom 5×, Whoredoms 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Prostitution 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Prostitution 4×, Faithlessness 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2184 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H2184 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H2184 across 9 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2184 across 9 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.
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.
- a. sexual Ho 4:11. e.g. Hosea 4:11
- b. international Ez 23:27. e.g. Ezekiel 23:27
- c. religious Nu 14:33 (J) Je 3:2, 9; 13:27 Ez 43:7, 9 Ho 6:10 (where WeKl. Proph. suggests זָנִיתָ); cf. זָנָה 3. e.g. Numbers 14:33
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.f.abstr. fornication;—ז׳ Ho 4:11; 6:10; sf. זְנוּתֵךְ Je 13:27 Ez 23:27; זְנוּתָהּ Je 3:9; זְנוּתָם Ez 43:7, 9; זְנוּתַיִךְ Je 3:2; זְנוּתֵיכֶם Nu 14:33.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זנה (zânâh) (H2181) — to commit fornication.
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.
זְנוּת
- prostitution, unchastity, voluptuousness. Sot. IX, 15 (49ᵇ) בית הועד יהיה לז׳ (= לבית ז׳) the scholars’ meeting house shall become a place of licentiousness (where low people assemble). Num. R. s. 13 על ז׳ אחותו for seducing his sister. Ab. Zar. 36ᵇ דרך ז׳ a meretricious connection, opp. אִישׁוּת. Gen. R. s. 26 על הכל … חוץ מן הז׳ … the Lord is long-suffering to everything except debauchery. Keth. 3ᵃ, v. בְּעִילָה; a. v. fr.
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 9 distinct written forms H2184 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/זְנוּתַ֖יִ/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Jeremiah 3:2 | 1 |
| בִּ/זְנוּתָ֔/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 43:7 | 1 |
| זְנ֛וּת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Hosea 4:11 | 1 |
| זְנ֣וּת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Hosea 6:10 | 1 |
| זְנוּתֵ֔/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 13:27 | 1 |
| זְנוּתֵ֖/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 23:27 | 1 |
| זְנוּתֵי/כֶ֑ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Numbers 14:33 | 1 |
| זְנוּתָ֔/הּ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 3:9 | 1 |
| זְנוּתָ֛/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 43:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2184, 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
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.
