חָבַק
to embrace
‘to embrace’ is one of 2 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
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H2263 appears in the Book of Proverbs — 2 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.
Proverbs
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.
חבק — transliterated châbaq — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to embrace.” Debuting at Genesis 29:13, it then recurs through the corpus. With 12 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Genesis (25% of all occurrences). Across 2 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Piel). See the sense tree, 12-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2263 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 3 verses 25%
- Proverbs 2 verses 17%
- Ecclesiastes 2 verses 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 12 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 25%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 8%
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: Embrace 4×, Embraced 3×
- American Standard Version: Embrace 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Embraces me 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Embrace 2×, Embraces me 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2263 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H2263 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H2263 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H2263 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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
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
- Inf. לַחֲבוֹק Ec 3:5; Pt. חֹבֵק Ec 4:5; חֹבֶקֶת 2 K 4:16;—embrace, c. acc. בֵּן 2 K 4:16; יָדָיו Ec 4:5 (said of הַכְּסִיל = fold his arms, i.e. be idle; cf. חִבֻּק); no obj. expr. Ec 3:5 (‖ Pi). e.g. Ecclesiastes 3:5
Piel
- Pf. חִבְּקוּ Jb 24:8 La 4:5; Impf. וַיְחַבֵּק Gn 48:10; וַיְחַבֶּק־ Gn 29:13; וַיְחַבְּקֵהוּ Gn 33:4; 3 fs. sf. תְּחַבְּקֵ֫נִי Ct 2:6; 8:3; 2 ms. וּתְחַבֵּק Pr 5:20, sf. תְּחַבְּקֶ֫נָּה Pr 4:8; Inf. חַבֵּק Ec 3:5;—embrace of pers., no obj. עת לִרְחֹק מֵחַבֵּק Ec 3:5 (‖ Qal); sq. לְ Gn 29:13 (J), 48:10 (E); sq. sf. 33:4 (J), Pr 4:8 Ct 2:6; 8:3; c. acc. Pr 5:20; embrace צוּר for want of shelter Jb 24:8 (of poor); embrace refuse-heaps אשׁפתות La 4:5, i.e. are outcasts. e.g. Job 24:8
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. clasp, embrace (NH id.; 𝔗 חַבֵּקֹ; Mand.. ܚܒܰܩ, NSyr. ܚܦܩ; Arabic حَبَقَ ii. collect one’s possessions, etc., Frey)—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
חָבַק
- to embrace, press, fasten. Part. pass. חָבוּק, pl. חֲבוּקִין clinging to, creeping (of vines). Y. Kil. VI, beg., 30ᵇ ח׳ לכותל creeping up the wall.
- to embrace. Pesik. R. s. 3 באין ומְחַבְּקִין וכ׳ they shall come and embrace Rachel’s grave; a. fr.
- to embrace one another, make love. Y. Bets. II, 61ᶜ מִתְחַבֵּק עם וכ׳ making love to thy wife; Y. Sabb. II, 6ᵃ bot. מְחַבֵּק.
חֲבַק
- , Pa. חַבֵּק
- 1. same. Targ. Prov. IV, 8 חַבֵּיקְיָהּ embrace her (Wisdom). Ib. V, 20; a. e.—Pes. 111ᵇ חַבְּקֵיה לדיקלא (Ms. M. חנקיה, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note, Rashi נפלא אדיקלא, Rashb. נפקא אד׳) he threw his arms around the tree.
- 2. to fold hands, cmp. חֲבִינָנוּתָא. Targ. Prov. VI, 10 (h. text חִבֻּק).
חֶבֶק
- (preced. wds.) junction;
- 1. loop of ribands on the shoe, ankle loop. Nidd. 58ᵃ עד מקום ה׳ the part of the leg to the place where the loop sits (is called the inside of the leg); וח׳ עצמו and (if blood is found) on the ankle itself. [Oth. opin.: ‘the place where the leg meets the thigh in a squatting position’, Ar.—‘the knee-hole with its sinews’, Rashi.]
- 2. riband around the neck. — Pl. חֲבָקִין. Sabb. 57ᵃ
- 3. a band with which the saddle or housing of an animal is fastened around its belly; [oth. opin.: the housing itself]. Kel. XIX, 3. Sifra Sh’mini, Sh’rats., Par. 6, ch. VIII; Sabb. 64ᵃ. B. Bath. 78ᵃ, v. קִילְקִי.
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 12 distinct written forms H2263 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2263, 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.
Derived from this word
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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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
- Genesis 29:13
- 2 Kings 4:16
- Job 24:8
- Proverbs 4:8
- Ecclesiastes 3:5
- Song of Solomon 2:6
- Lamentations 4:5
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.
