חֶמְדָּה
desirable
‘desirable’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 9 times (50%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 7 times (39%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 18 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2532 appears — 18 distinct verses across 13 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.
Genesis 1 verse
1 Samuel 1 verse
2 Chronicles 3 verses
- 2 Chronicles 21:20 חֶמְדָּ֔ה n c fs Thirty-two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years: and he departed without being desired; and they buried him in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.
- 2 Chronicles 32:27 חֶמְדָּֽה n c fs Hezekiah had exceeding much riches and honor: and he provided him treasuries for silver, and for gold, and for precious stones, and for spices, and for shields, and for all manner of goodly vessels;
- 2 Chronicles 36:10 חֶמְדַּ֣ת n c fs cs At the return of the year king Nebuchadnezzar sent, and brought him to Babylon, with the goodly vessels of the house of Yahweh, and made Zedekiah his brother king over Judah and Jerusalem.
Ezra 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 3 verses
- Jeremiah 3:19 חֶמְדָּ֔ה n c fs But I said, How I will put you among the children, and give you a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of the nations! and I said, You shall call me My Father, and shall not turn away from following me.
- Jeremiah 12:10 חֶמְדָּתִ֖/י n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
- Jeremiah 25:34 חֶמְדָּֽה n c fs Wail, you shepherds, and cry; and wallow [in ashes], you principal of the flock; for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are fully come, and you shall fall like a goodly vessel.
Ezekiel 1 verse
Daniel 2 verses
- Daniel 11:8 חֶמְדָּתָ֜/ם n c fs cs + sfx pers 3mp Also their gods, with their molten images, [and] with their goodly vessels of silver and of gold, shall he carry captive into Egypt; and he shall refrain some years from the king of the north.
- Daniel 11:37 חֶמְדַּ֥ת n c fs cs Neither shall he regard the gods of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all.
Hosea 1 verse
Nahum 1 verse
Haggai 1 verse
Zechariah 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.
The Hebrew word חמדה centers on the idea of “desirable.” Where the King James Version says “pleasant,” newer translations reach for “delight” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 18 verses — uncommon. First canonically at Genesis 27:15, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. Dig into 18-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2532 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 →
- 18
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 18 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 18 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 3 verses 17%
- Jeremiah 3 verses 17%
- Daniel 2 verses 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 18 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 10 verses · 56%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 39%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 6%
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: Pleasant 5×, Precious 3×, All pleasant 2×
- American Standard Version: Pleasant 4×, Goodly 3×, All goodly 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pleasant 3×, Precious 3×, Riches 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Delight 5×, Desirable 2×, Pleasant 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2532 across 25 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2532 across 24 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2532 across 23 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 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 H2532 across 18 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.
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.
- desire, that which is desirable (noun feminine)
- pleasant, precious (adjective)
Word origin
n.f. id.—ח׳ Ho 13:15 + 8 times; cstr. חֶמְדַּת 1 S 9:20 + 3 times; sf. חֶמְדָּתִי Je 12:10; חֶמְדָּתֵךְ Ez 26:12; חֶמְדָּתָם Dn 11:8;—desire of Israel 1 S 9:20 sq. לְ before obj. of desire; בְּלֹא ח׳ = without desire 2 Ch 21:20 (i.e. he lived as no one desired), v. Öt 𝔊 (not 𝔊L) 𝔙; concrete: כל־ח׳ ישׂראל 1 S 9:20 and for whom is all that is desirable in Isr.? so 𝔊 𝔙 RV Dr; (> AV and on whom is all the desire of Isr.?); cf. ובאו ח׳ כל־הגוים Hg 2:7 (i.e. the desirable, precious things of all nations); elsewhere after cstr. as חֶמֶד; especially כלי ח׳ Ho 13:15; Na 2:10; Je 25:34; 2 Ch 32:27; 36:10; Dn 11:8; שְׂכִיּוֹת ח׳ Is 2:16, אֶרֶץ ח׳ ψ 106:24; Je 3:19; Zc 7:14, cf. חֶלְקַת ח׳ Je 12:10; בתי ח׳ Ez 26:12; ח׳ נשׁים Dn 11:37, appar. ref. to some obj. of idolatrous worship, perhaps Adonis = Tammuz Ew Bev (Astarte, Meinh).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חמד (chemed) (H2531) — desire.
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.
חֶמְדָּה
- preced. wds.)
- 1. same. Sabb. 152ᵃ (expl. אביונה, Koh. XII, 5) זו ח׳ that means the sexual appetite; (Koh. R. to l. c. תַּאֲוָה).). e.g. Ecclesiastes 12:5
- 2. desirability, desirable object, precious gift. Tanḥ. Sh’moth 29, a. e. דבר שהוא ח׳ מתוך ח׳ something which is the most desirable of all desirable things. Y. Taan. II, beg. 65ᵃ כלי אחד של ח׳ the only precious vessel (the Torah) left to us. Sabb. 88ᵇ ח׳ גנוזה Ms. M. (ed. חמודה) a reserved treasure (the Law); a. fr.
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 12 distinct written forms H2532 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| חֶמְדָּֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Hosea 13:15 | 4 |
| חֶמְדַּ֣ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Haggai 2:7 | 3 |
| חֶמְדָּ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 21:20 | 2 |
| הַ/חֲמֻדֹ֔ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 27:15 | 1 |
| הַ/חֶמְדָּֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 2:16 | 1 |
| חֲמוּדֹ֖ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Ezra 8:27 | 1 |
| חֶמְדַּ֥ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 11:37 | 1 |
| חֶמְדָּ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 106:24 | 1 |
| חֶמְדָּ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Zechariah 7:14 | 1 |
| חֶמְדָּתִ֖/י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 12:10 | 1 |
| חֶמְדָּתֵ֖/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 26:12 | 1 |
| חֶמְדָּתָ֜/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 11:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2532, 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
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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 18 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
- Genesis 27:15
- 1 Samuel 9:20
- 2 Chronicles 21:20
- Ezra 8:27
- Psalms 106:24
- Isaiah 2:16
- Jeremiah 3:19
- Ezekiel 26:12
- Daniel 11:8
- Hosea 13:15
- Nahum 2:9
- Haggai 2:7
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.
