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).
Every verse where H2336 appears in the Book of 2 Kings — 1 distinct verse. 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
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.
