זַ֫עַף
rage
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 3 times (50%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (33%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2197 appears — 6 distinct verses across 5 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.
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 16:10 בְ/זַ֥עַף prep + n c ms Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in the prison-house; for he was in a rage with him because of this thing. Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time.
- 2 Chronicles 28:9 בְ/זַ֔עַף prep + n c ms But a prophet of Yahweh was there, whose name was Oded: and he went out to meet the host that came to Samaria, and said to them, Behold, because Yahweh, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, he has delivered them into your hand, and you have slain them in a rage which has reached up to heaven.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jonah 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.
The Hebrew noun זעף centers on the idea of “rage.” Debuting at 2 Chronicles 16:10, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 6 verses across 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to 2 Chronicles (33%), then Proverbs and Isaiah. It shares a root with זעף, זלעפה and זעף. 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 H2197 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 2 verses 33%
- Proverbs 1 verse 17%
- Isaiah 1 verse 17%
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 6 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 50%
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: Indignation 2×
- American Standard Version: Indignation 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Rage 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Rage 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2197 across 6 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2197 across 6 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2197 across 6 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2197 across 5 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 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.
- 1. rage of king, leading to violence Pr 19:12 (‖ נַהַם כַּכְּפִיר), 2 Ch 16:10 (בְּז׳ עִמּוֹ עַל־זאת; ‖ כעם), 28:9; ז׳ אַף Is 30:30 raging of anger (of י׳); ז׳ י׳ Mi 7:9. e.g. Proverbs 19:12
- 2. raging of sea Jon 1:15. e.g. Jonah 1:15
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. storming, raging, rage (poet. and late)—ז׳ abs. 2 Ch 16:10; 28:9; cstr. Is 30:30 + 2 times; sf. זַעְפּוֹ Jon 1:15;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זעף (zâʻaph) (H2196) — to be angry.
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.
זָעַף
- to be excited, troubled, serious.—Part. act. זוֹעֵף; f. זוֹעֶפֶת, pl. זוֹעֲפוֹת, part. pass. זָעוּף; f. זְעוּפָה; pl. זְעוּפוֹת. Pesik. R. s. 21 פנים זוע׳ (a. זעו׳) serious (commanding) countenance. Pesik. Baḥod. p. 110ᵃ; Yalk. Ex. 286 פנים זו׳, contrad. to בינוניות indifferent, מסבירות inviting, kind countenance.
זְעַף
- , to rage, threaten, storm. Targ. Ps. L, 3 (h. text נשערה). Ib. X, 5 (h. text יפיח).—Gen. R. s. 63 בעא רבי דיִזְעוֹף ביה Rabbi wanted him (R. S.) to threaten him; Yalk. ib. 110 דיִזְעַף (Y. Ter. VIII, end, 46ᶜ למינזף).
זַעַף
- preced. wds.) stormwind, vehemence; anger. Taan. III, 8 התחילו לירד בז׳ the rain began to come down with vehemence. Pesik. R. s. 15, v. אַגְרִיאוֹן. Treat. S’maḥ. III, 9 מיתה של ז׳ a sudden death (by the anger of the Lord); cmp. M. Kat. 28ᵃ, s. v. דָּחַף.
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 6 distinct written forms H2197 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְ/זַ֔עַף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 28:9 | 1 |
| בְ/זַ֥עַף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 16:10 | 1 |
| בְּ/זַ֣עַף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 30:30 | 1 |
| זַ֣עַף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Proverbs 19:12 | 1 |
| זַ֤עַף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Micah 7:9 | 1 |
| מִ/זַּעְפּֽ/וֹ | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Jonah 1:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2197, 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 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
