זְקֻנִים
old age
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
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (50%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 2 times (50%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 4 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2208 appears — 4 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Genesis 4 verses
- Genesis 21:2 לִ/זְקֻנָ֑י/ו prep + n c mp cs + sfx pers 3ms Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
- Genesis 21:7 לִ/זְקֻנָֽי/ו prep + n c mp cs + sfx pers 3ms She said, "Who would have said to Abraham, that Sarah would nurse children? For I have borne him a son in his old age."
- Genesis 37:3 זְקֻנִ֥ים n c mp Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors.
- Genesis 44:20 זְקֻנִ֖ים n c mp We said to my lord, 'We have a father, an old man, and a child of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother; and his father loves him.'
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.
זקן (zâqun) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “old age.” With only 4 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. It clusters heavily in Genesis, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Debuting at Genesis 21:2, it then recurs through the corpus. From the same root come זקן, זקן and זקן. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2208 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 4 verses 100%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 100%
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: Old age 4×
- American Standard Version: Old age 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Old age 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Old age 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2208 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2208 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2208 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2208 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- old age, extreme old age
Word origin
זְקֻנִים n.pl.[m.] old age
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זקן (zâqên) (H2204) — to be old.
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.
זָקֵן I
- (b. h.) [to be thin, shrunk, hard,] to be old. Gen. R. s. 48 (ref. to Gen. XVIII, 13) ואני זָקַנְתִּי מלעשות וכ׳ am I (the Lord) too old to do wonders? e.g. Genesis 18:13
- 1. to grow old. Snh. 100ᵇ הִזְקִינָה שמא וכ׳ when she arrives at old age, he is afraid lest &c. Erub. 56ᵃ מַזְקִינִים בחצי וכ׳ they age in the middle of their days (prematurely). Sabb. 152ᵃ כל זמן שמַזְקִינִין the older they grow; a. fr.
- 2. to make old, consider old (feeble). Gen. R. s. 48 אתם … ומזקינים חביריכם you consider each himself young, and each his partner old (Yalk. ib. 82 ומז׳ אדניכם and believe your Lord too old [to do wonders]); v. supra.
- 1. to become old, weak, frail. Y. Ber. IX, end 14ᶜ (ref. to prov. XXIII, 22) אם נִזְדַּקְּנָה אומתך וכ׳ if thy nation is decaying (in faith), stand up and fence her in (prevent her being trodden upon); Yalk. Prov. 960.—2) (cmp. דקדק) to be maturely considered, be clear (beyond doubt);
- 3. (cmp. קשיש) to be hard, difficult. Tosef. Snh. VII, 7 (the presiding judge declares) (נִיזְקַן) נִזְקַן הדין ed. Zuck. (Var. נזדקן, נזדקק); discussed in Snh. 42ᵃ מאי נזד׳ הדין what does nizdakken mean? Does it mean קש דינא the case is hard (difficult, so as to demand a reconsideration)?… It means חכם דינא the case is clear; Y. Snh. V, end, 23ᵃ
זָקֵן II
- preced.)
- 1. old man. Gen. R. s. 39, opp. בחור. Y. Bicc. III, 65ᶜ bot. עמידת ז׳ (Yalk. Lev. 670 מצות ז׳) the duty of standing up before an old man. Ḥag. 14ᵃ; a. fr.
- 2. elder, judge, scholar. Ib. (ref. to Is. III, 2) ז׳ זה שראוי וכ׳ zaken means one fit to sit in college sessions. Ber. 8ᵇ ז׳ ששכח וכ׳ a scholar who forgot what he had learned, &c., v. אוֹנֶס. Kidd. 32ᵇ אין ז׳ אלא חכם under zaken (Lev. XIX, 32) a scholar is meant; Sifra K’dosh. Par. 3, ch. VII אין ז̇ק̇ן̇ אלא ז̇ה שק̇נ̇ה חכמה a zaken is he who has acquired wisdom (through study).—ז׳ אשמאי, v. אַשְׁמַאי. Yoma 28ᵇ ז׳ ויושב בישיבה a scholar and member of college. Y. M Kat. III, beg. 81ᶜ איני מכירך ז׳ I shall not recognize thee as (give thee the diploma of) a zaken; a. fr.—Pl. זְקֵנִים. Snh. I, 3, v. סְמִיכָה. Num. R. s. 14 מצות הז׳ rabbinical law. Ber. 11ᵃ זִקְנֵי ב"ש the graduates of the Shammai school; a. v. fr. e.g. Isaiah 3:2
- 3. grandfather, ancestor. Ex. R. s. 1 מעשה זְקֵנָן the conduct of their ancestor (Abraham). Pesik. Zakh., p. 27ᵇ; a. fr.—Fem. זְקֵנָה, זְקֵינָה. 1) old woman. Gen. R. s. 39.—Nidd. 9ᵃ ז׳ one who is past the change of life. Ib. 9ᵇ; a. fr.—2) grandmother, ancestress. Kidd. 31ᵇ הוה ליה ההיא אמא זקי׳ had a grandmother. Gen. R. s. 93 זְקֵינָתוֹ של זה this man’s (my) ancestress (Sarah); a. e.—3) (sub. נְטִיעָה) old plantation. Tosef. Shebi. I, 2; a. e., opp. נטיעה young plantation.—Pl. זְקֵינוֹת. Y. ib. I, 33ᵇ bot.; a. e.
זָקָן
- beard, hair-covered spot. Ber. 11ᵃ זְקָנְךָ וכ׳ thy beard is &c., v. גָּדַל. Snh. VIII, 1 (68ᵇ) עד שיקיף ז׳ התחתון וכ׳ until he grows a beard, by which is meant the hair of the genitals &c.; a. fr.—Pl. זְקָנִים. Lev. R. s. 3.
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 4 distinct written forms H2208 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| זְקֻנִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 44:20 | 1 |
| זְקֻנִ֥ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 37:3 | 1 |
| לִ/זְקֻנָ֑י/ו | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Genesis 21:2 | 1 |
| לִ/זְקֻנָֽי/ו | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Genesis 21:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2208, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
