חֲכִילָה
Hachilah
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Hachilah’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H2444 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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 Samuel 3 verses
- 1 Samuel 23:19 הַֽ/חֲכִילָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n Proper Then came up the Ziphites to Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doesn't David hide himself with us in the strongholds in the wood, in the hill of Hachilah, which is on the south of the desert?
- 1 Samuel 26:1 הַ/חֲכִילָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n Proper The Ziphites came to Saul to Gibeah, saying, Doesn't David hide himself in the hill of Hachilah, which is before the desert?
- 1 Samuel 26:3 הַ/חֲכִילָ֗ה ptcl def.art + n Proper Saul encamped in the hill of Hachilah, which is before the desert, by the way. But David abode in the wilderness, and he saw that Saul came after him into the wilderness.
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, חכילה (Chăkîylâh) means “Hachilah.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Samuel (100% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in 1 Samuel 23:19. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2444 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 3 verses 100%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 100%
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: Hachilah 3×
- American Standard Version: Hachilah 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Hachilah 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Hakilah 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2444 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2444 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2444 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2444 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- Hachilah = "dark"
- a hill is southern Judah, on the edge of the wilderness of Ziph
Word origin
חֲכִילָה n.pr.loc. ( dark ) a hill in southern Judah, edge of wilderness of Ziph
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חכליל (chaklîyl) (H2447) — dull.
Forms in the corpus
The 3 distinct written forms H2444 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/חֲכִילָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 26:1 | 1 |
| הַ/חֲכִילָ֗ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 26:3 | 1 |
| הַֽ/חֲכִילָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 23:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2444, 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
Shares the same root
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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Hachilah). 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
The darksome hill, one of the peaks of the long ridge of el-Kolah, running out of the Ziph plateau, "on the south of Jeshimon" (i.e., of the "waste"), the district to which one looks down from the plateau of Ziph (1 Sam. 23:19). After his reconciliation with Saul at Engedi (24:1-8), David returned to Hachilah, where he had fixed his quarters. The Ziphites treacherously informed Saul of this, and he immediately (26:1-4) renewed his pursuit of David, and "pitched in the hill of Hachilah." David and his nephew Abishai stole at night into the midst of Saul's camp, when they were all asleep, and noiselessly removed the royal spear and the cruse from the side of the king, and then, crossing the intervening valley to the height on the other side, David cried to the people, and thus awoke the sleepers. He then addressed Saul, who recognized his voice, and expostulated with him. Saul professed to be penitent; but David could not put confidence in him, and he now sought refuge at Ziklag. David and Saul never afterwards met. (1 Sam. 26:13-25).
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
my hope is in her
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
