חֹל
profane
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.
Every verse where H2455 appears — 7 distinct verses across 3 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.
Leviticus 1 verse
1 Samuel 2 verses
- 1 Samuel 21:4 חֹ֖ל n c ms The priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread under my hand, but there is holy bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women.
- 1 Samuel 21:5 חֹ֔ל n c ms David answered the priest, and said to him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days; when I came out, the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was but a common journey; how much more then today shall their vessels be holy?
Ezekiel 4 verses
- Ezekiel 22:26 לְ/חֹל֙ prep + n c ms Her priests have done violence to my law, and have profaned my holy things: they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they caused men to discern between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.
- Ezekiel 42:20 לְ/חֹֽל prep + n c ms He measured it on the four sides: it had a wall round about, the length five hundred, and the breadth five hundred, to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common.
- Ezekiel 44:23 לְ/חֹ֑ל prep + n c ms They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
- Ezekiel 48:15 חֹֽל n c ms The five thousand that are left in the breadth, in front of the twenty-five thousand, shall be for common use, for the city, for dwelling and for suburbs; and the city shall be in the midst of it.
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.
חל (chôl) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “profane.” It clusters heavily in Ezekiel, which alone accounts for 57% of its uses. With 7 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Leviticus 10:10. It clusters with חלל, חלה and חליל 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 H2455 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 86%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 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†: Profane 2×
- American Standard Version†: Common 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Common 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Common 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2455 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H2455 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H2455 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H2455 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- profaneness, commonness, unholy, profane, common, sand
Word origin
I. v. sub III. חלל.
II. n.[m.] profaneness, commonness;—לֶחֶם חֹל 1 S 21:5, דֶּרֶךְ חֹל v 6; in concrete sense, opp. קֹדֶשׁ Lv 10:10 (P), Ez 22:26; 42:20; 44:23; 48:15.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חלל (châlal) (H2490) — to profane.
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.
חֵיל I
- (חוּל, v. חַיִיל) surrounding, esp. Ḥel, a place within the fortification of the Temple. Midd. I, 5. Snh. 88ᵇ. Par. III, 11; Targ. Y. Num. XIX, 9; a. fr.
חל
- , Y. Ned. IV, beg. 39ᶜ bot כגון החל מן נונייה, read: כגון הדין חֶלְמוֹן נ׳ as, for instance, fish-raw.—Y. Ab. Zar. II, 40ᵈ top כחל לה, read: כחללה, v. חֲלָלָא.
חָל
- , perf. a. part. of חוּל.
חַל I
- , v. חֲלַל
חַל II
- (חלל, cmp. חָלֵי) weak, mild (wine). Targ. Y. Deut. VIII, 8, opp. חָרִיף.
חַל III
- vinegar, v. חָלָא III.
חָלָא III
- (חול or חלל) [turned, spoiled,] vinegar. Targ. O. Num. VI, 3 חַל; Y. חֲלָא. Targ. Ps. LXIX, 22 חָ׳ ed. (Ms. חֲ׳). Targ. Prov. XXV, 20 חלא ed. Lag. (ed. חֵילָא, Ms. חוֹ׳). Targ. Ruth II, 14.—Ab. Zar. 12ᵇ. Gen. R. s. 39, v. זוּל I ch.—Ḥull. 120ᵃ ח׳ דקריש Ar. (ed. חלב) a jellied vinegar sauce of meat; a. fr.—Y. Maasr. III, 50ᵈ bot. ח׳ בר חמרא a deteriorated son, v. חוֹמֶץ; Ḥull. 105ᵃ. [Y. Ter. VII, 45ᵈ bot. בחלא, read: בחַקְלָא.]
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 7 distinct written forms H2455 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/חֹ֑ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 10:10 | 1 |
| חֹ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 21:5 | 1 |
| חֹ֖ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 21:4 | 1 |
| חֹֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 48:15 | 1 |
| לְ/חֹ֑ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 44:23 | 1 |
| לְ/חֹֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 42:20 | 1 |
| לְ/חֹל֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 22:26 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2455, 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
- חלה challâh H2471 cake
- חליל châlîyl H2485 flute
- חלל châlâl H2491 slain
- מחלה mᵉchillâh H4247 hole
- תחלה tᵉchillâh H8462 beginning
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 → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
