חָכָה
to wait
also: wait for, await fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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. Here: ‘wait’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘pl. cstr.’
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- 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”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
13 distinct verses where H2442 appears in the Piel stem, across 8 books. Filtered view — show all forms. 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 2 verses
- 2 Kings 7:9 וְ/חִכִּ֛ינוּ conj + Piel wpf 1cp Then they said one to another, We aren't doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we hold our peace: if we wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us; now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household.
- 2 Kings 9:3 תְחַכֶּֽה Piel impf 2ms Then take the vial of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, Thus says Yahweh, I have anointed you king over Israel. Then open the door, and flee, and don't wait.
Job 2 verses
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 8:17 וְ/חִכִּ֨יתִי֙ conj + Piel wpf 1cs I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.
- Isaiah 30:18 יְחַכֶּ֤ה ח֥וֹכֵי Piel impf 3ms Qal ptcp.act mp cs Therefore will Yahweh wait, that he may be gracious to you; and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy on you: for Yahweh is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
- Isaiah 64:4 לִ/מְחַכֵּה prep + Piel ptcp.act ms cs For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen a God besides you, who works for him who waits for him.
Daniel 1 verse
Hosea 1 verse
Habakkuk 1 verse
Zephaniah 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.
חכה — transliterated châkâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to wait.” Its earliest occurrence is 2 Kings 7:9. Spanning 13 verses in 8 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Read the stem: it spans 2 stems, including Qal and Piel. Sharing its root, it stands alongside חקה and חכה. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2442 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 →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 13 occurrences in the concordance →
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 13 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 62%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 38%
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: Wait 2×, Waiteth 2×
- American Standard Version: Wait 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Wait 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Wait 3×, Waits 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2442 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2442 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H2442 across 14 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2442 across 16 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.
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 5 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
- Pt. pl. cstr. חוֹכֵי Is 30:18, with לְ waiting for him (י׳). e.g. Isaiah 30:18
Piel
- חִכָּה Jb 32:4; חִכְּתָה ψ 33:20; חִכִּיתִי Is 8:17; חִכּוּ ψ 106:13; חִכִּינוּ 2 K 7:9; Impf. יְחַכֶּה Is 30:18; תְּחַכֶּה 2 K 9:3; Imv. חַכֵּה־ Hb 2:3; חַכּוּ Zp 3:8; Inf. cstr. כְּחַכֵּי Ho 6:9 (Ephraimit. for חַכֵּה?); Pt. מְחַכֶּה Dn 12:12; cstr. מְחַכֵּה Is 64:3; pl. מְחַכִּים Jb 3:21;— e.g. Job 32:4
- 1. wait, tarry, abs. 2 K 9:3 tarry not; with עַד till morning light 2 K 7:9; c. acc. את איוב בדברים Jb 32:4 tarry for Job with words. e.g. 2 Kings 9:3
- 2. wait (in ambush), כְּחַכֵּי אִישׁ גְּדוּדִים Ho 6:9 as marauding bands wait for a man AV RV De, or as marauders lie in wait Hi Ew (taking אישׁ as cstr.) e.g. Hosea 6:9
- 3. wait for, await, with לְ. for י׳ Is 8:17; 64:3 Zp 3:8 ψ 33:20; for his counsel ψ 106:13; for his vision Hb 2:3; for death Jb 3:21; יחכה יהוה לחננכם Yahweh waiteth to be gracious unto you Is 30:18 (Di regards this as threatening and refers it to 1); abs. waiteth (and cometh to the days of blessedness) Dn 12:12. e.g. Isaiah 8:17
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. wait, await—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חקה (châqâh) (H2707) — to cut.
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.
חָכָה
- , v. חכי
חַכָּה
- hook, fish-hook. Y. Pes. IV, 30ᵈ top. M. Kat. 25ᵇ בנחל … נפלה ח׳ וכ׳ if the fish-hook is thrown into the rapid river (to catch the fish), what can the waters in the pond do (if the great die, what can common humanity expect)?—Erub. 19ᵃ מטילין לו ח׳ וכ׳ they put a hook into the convict’s mouth &c.; a. e.—Pl. חַכִּין. Tosef. B. Kam. VIII, 17. Sifré Num. s. 44 גררום בחַכֵּי ברזל they dragged them out of the sanctuary with iron hooks (on shafts, v. בַּקְלוֹסָא); Yalk. ib. 712 בקני (corr. acc.); Sifra Sh’mini, introd. חנית של ברזל (read: חַכִּים). Tosef. B. Kam. XI, 13 שלש חכין (Var. חוטין, כופין) three fuller’s hooks (for stretching clothes; v. חוֹב II, 2).
חכי
- (b. h.), Pi. חִכָּה
- 1. (denom. of חַכָּה) to insert a hook, to fish with the angle, to fasten. Y. Sabb. IV, end, 7ᶜ אם לחַכּוֹת בו if it is a sûgar (v. סוּגַר) with which to fasten a dog (by inserting the hook of a chain), opp. בשביל שלא לאכול one intended to prevent from eating (a muzzle); Y. Bets. II, end, 61ᵈ (not להכות). B. Kam. 81ᵃ ומְחַכִּין בימה וכ׳ and that people be free to fish with the angle in the lake of Tiberias.
- 2. (b. h.) to lie in wait (v. Hos. VI, 9); to wait for, hope, be anxious for (with ל). Snh. 97ᵇ (fr. Hab. II, 3) הַכֵּה לו wait for it (the redemption); ib. אנו מְחַכִּין והוא אינו מְחַכֶּה we are anxious, but He is not (ref. to Is. XXX, 18). Pesik. R. s. 34; Yalk. Zeph. 567; a. e. [Yalk. Lev. 604 מחכה, v. הָקָה.] e.g. Hosea 6:9
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 14 distinct written forms H2442 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 H2442, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 13 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.
