חִירָם
Hiram
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Hiram’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H2438 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 17 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.
1 Kings
- 1 Kings 5:1 חִירָ֨ם חִירָ֛ם n Proper n Proper Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon; for he had heard that they had anointed him king in the room of his father: for Hiram was ever a lover of David.
- 1 Kings 5:2 חִירָ֖ם n Proper Solomon sent to Hiram, saying,
- 1 Kings 5:7 חִירָ֛ם n Proper It happened, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be Yahweh this day, who has given to David a wise son over this great people.
- 1 Kings 5:8 חִירָם֙ n Proper Hiram sent to Solomon, saying, I have heard [the message] which you have sent to me: I will do all your desire concerning timber of cedar, and concerning timber of fir.
- 1 Kings 5:10 חִיר֜וֹם n Proper So Hiram gave Solomon timber of cedar and timber of fir according to all his desire.
- 1 Kings 5:11 לְ/חִירָ֜ם לְ/חִירָ֖ם prep + n Proper prep + n Proper Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.
- 1 Kings 5:12 חִירָם֙ n Proper Yahweh gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him; and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together.
- 1 Kings 5:18 חִיר֖וֹם n Proper Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders and the Gebalites did fashion them, and prepared the timber and the stones to build the house.
- 1 Kings 7:13 חִירָ֖ם n Proper King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre.
- 1 Kings 7:40 חִיר֔וֹם חִירָ֗ם n Proper n Proper Hiram made the basins, and the shovels, and the basins. So Hiram made an end of doing all the work that he worked for king Solomon in the house of Yahweh:
- 1 Kings 7:45 חִירָ֛ם n Proper and the pots, and the shovels, and the basins: even all these vessels, which Hiram made for king Solomon, in the house of Yahweh, were of burnished brass.
- 1 Kings 9:11 חִירָ֣ם לְ/חִירָם֙ n Proper prep + n Proper (now Hiram the king of Tyre had furnished Solomon with cedar trees and fir trees, and with gold, according to all his desire), that then king Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.
- 1 Kings 9:12 חִירָם֙ n Proper Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they didn't please him.
- 1 Kings 9:14 חִירָ֖ם n Proper Hiram sent to the king one hundred twenty talents of gold.
- 1 Kings 9:27 חִירָ֤ם n Proper Hiram sent in the navy his servants, sailors who had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.
- 1 Kings 10:11 חִירָ֔ם n Proper The navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees and precious stones.
- 1 Kings 10:22 חִירָ֑ם n Proper For the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish with the navy of Hiram: once every three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
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.
At its core, חירם (Chîyrâm) means “Hiram.” Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Kings (81% of all occurrences). With 21 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. First canonically at 2 Samuel 5:11, it enters the text early. Dig into 21-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2438 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 →
- 21
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 21 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,251
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,251 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 21 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Kings 17 verses 81%
- 2 Chronicles 2 verses 10%
- 2 Samuel 1 verse 5%
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 21 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 86%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 14%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Hiram 18×, Now hiram 2×
- American Standard Version†: Hiram 20×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Hiram 13×, Huram 4×, Hiram’s 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Hiram 24×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2438 across 23† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2438 across 23† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2438 across 23† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2438 across 24† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. king of Tyre, contemp. of David & Solomon 2 S 5:11 1 K 5:15(×2), 16, 21, 22, 24, 25(×2), 26, 32; 9:11(×2), 12, 14, 27; 10:11, 22 1 Ch 14:1 2 Ch 2:2, 10, 11; 8:2, 18; 9:10, 21. e.g. 2 Samuel 5:11
- 2. an artificer of Tyre, sent by Hiram the king 1 K 7:13, 40(×2), 45 2 Ch 2:12; 4:11(×2), 16. e.g. 1 Kings 7:13
- 3. a Benjamite 1 Ch 8:5. e.g. 1 Chronicles 8:5
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
I. n.pr.m. Hiram (Ph. חרם; abbr. from foregoing)—ח׳ 2 S 5:11 + 18 times 1 K + Kt 1 Ch 14:1 2 Ch 4:11; 9:10 (all Qr חוּרָם); חִירוֹם 1 K 5:24, 32; 7:40; also חוּרָם 1 Ch 8:5 + 9 times Ch.—
II. v. sub אח, אחה supr. p. 27b.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חורם (Chûwrâm) (H2361) — Huram.
Forms in the corpus
The 17 distinct written forms H2438 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| חִירָ֖ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:2 | 3 |
| חִירָ֛ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:1 | 3 |
| חִירָם֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:8 | 3 |
| חירם | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 14:1 | 3 |
| חִירָ֨ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:1 | 2 |
| חִיר֔וֹם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 7:40 | 1 |
| חִיר֖וֹם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:18 | 1 |
| חִיר֜וֹם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:10 | 1 |
| חִירָ֑ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 10:22 | 1 |
| חִירָ֔ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 10:11 | 1 |
| חִירָ֗ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 7:40 | 1 |
| חִירָ֣ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 9:11 | 1 |
| חִירָ֤ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 9:27 | 1 |
| חוּרָ֨ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 14:1 | 1 |
| לְ/חִירָ֖ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:11 | 1 |
| לְ/חִירָ֜ם | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 5:11 | 1 |
| לְ/חִירָם֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 9:11 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Hiram). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
High-born. (1.) Generally "Huram," one of the sons of Bela (1 Chr. 8:5).
(2.) Also "Huram" and "Horam," king of Tyre. He entered into an alliance with David, and assisted him in building his palace by sending him able workmen, and also cedar-trees and fir-trees from Lebanon (2 Sam. 5:11; 1 Chr. 14:1). After the death of David he entered into a similar alliance with Solomon, and assisted him greatly in building the temple (1 Kings 5:1; 9:11; 2 Chr. 2:3). He also took part in Solomon's traffic to the Eastern Seas (1 Kings 9:27; 10:11; 2 Chr. 8:18; 9:10).
(3.) The "master workman" whom Hiram sent to Solomon. He was the son of a widow of Dan, and of a Tyrian father. In 2 Chr. 2:13 "Huram my father" should be Huram Abi, the word "Abi" (rendered here "my father") being regarded as a proper name, or it may perhaps be a title of distinction given to Huram, and equivalent to "master." (Comp. 1 Kings 7:14; 2 Chr. 4:16.) He cast the magnificent brazen works for Solomon's temple in clay-beds in the valley of Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
exaltation of life; a destroyer
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 21 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.
