חוֹחַ
thorn
also: brier, bramble, thornbush, thicket 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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 9 times (82%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (18%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2336 appears — 9 distinct verses across 7 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 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 25:18 הַ/ח֜וֹחַ הַ/חֽוֹחַ ptcl def.art + n c ms ptcl def.art + n c ms Joash king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give your daughter to my son as wife: and there passed by a wild animal that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle.
- 2 Chronicles 33:11 בַּ/חֹחִ֑ים prep det + n c mp Therefore Yahweh brought on them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh in chains, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.
Job 2 verses
Proverbs 1 verse
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Hosea 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.
“thorn” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun חוח (chôwach). First canonically at 2 Kings 14:9, it enters the text early. With 9 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Beyond “thorn” it also covers “brier”, “bramble”, and “thornbush” — see its full sense range. It clusters with חוח and חח under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2336 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.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 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
- 2 Chronicles 2 verses 22%
- Job 2 verses 22%
- 2 Kings 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.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 33%
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: Thistle 4×
- American Standard Version: Thistle 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Thistle 4×, Thorns 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Thornbush 3×, Bramble 2×, Thorn 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2336 across 11 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 H2336 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H2336 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H2336 across 12 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.
- 1.
- a. brier, bramble 2 K 14:9(×2) = 2 Ch 25:18(×2) (allegory of Jehoash); coll., sign of desolation Ho 9:6 (‖ קִמּוֹשׁ), Is 34:13 (‖ קִמּוֹשׁ, סִירִים), Jb 31:40 (opp. חִטִּים); in sim. of fool’s parable ח׳ עָלָה בְּיַד־שִׁכּוֹר Pr 26:9 a brier cometh into the hand of a drunken man (De Now Str); כְּשׁוֹשַׁנָּה בֵּין הַחוֹחִים Ct 2:2; briers = thickets as hiding-places 1 S 13:6 (but Ew We Dr חוֹרִים holes, cf. 14:11; v. sub iii. חרר; ‖ מְעָרוֹת, סְלָעִים, צְרִחִים, בֹּרוֹת; 𝔊 here ἐν τ. μάνδραις; 14:11 ἐκ τ. τρωγλῶν). e.g. 2 Kings 14:9
- 2. late,
- a. hook or ring, in jaw of crocodile c. תִּקֹּב Jb 40:26 (‖ הֲתָשִׂים אַגְמֹן בְּאַפּוֹ); of captive וַיִּלְכְּדוּ אֶת־מְנַשֶּׁה בַּחֹחִים 2 Ch 33:11 (cf. חַח). e.g. Job 40:26
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. 2 K 14:9 1. brier, bramble. 2. hook, ring, fetter;—ח׳ abs. Ho 9:6 + 8 times; pl. חֲוָחִים 1 S 13:6 (but v. infr.), חוֹחִים Ct 2:2; חֹחִים 2 Ch 33:11;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: from an unused root apparently meaning to pierce
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.
חוֹחַ
- (b. h.; = חוחו, v. חָוָה) thorn. B. Kam. 16ᵃ, v. next w.
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 H2336 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/ח֜וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 25:18 | 2 |
| הַ/חֽוֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 25:18 | 2 |
| בַּ/חֹחִ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 33:11 | 1 |
| הַ/חוֹחִ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Song of Solomon 2:2 | 1 |
| וָ/ח֖וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 34:13 | 1 |
| וּ֝/בְ/ח֗וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 41:2 | 1 |
| ח֖וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Hosea 9:6 | 1 |
| ח֗וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 31:40 | 1 |
| ח֭וֹחַ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 26:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2336, 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
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.
