חַמָּן
incense altar
also: sun-pillar, idol, image 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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 5 times (63%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 3 times (38%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 8 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2553 appears — 8 distinct verses across 4 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
2 Chronicles 3 verses
- 2 Chronicles 14:5 הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֑ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the sun-images: and the kingdom was quiet before him.
- 2 Chronicles 34:4 וְ/הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֛ים conj + ptcl def.art + n c mp They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence; and the sun-images that were on high above them he hewed down; and the Asherim, and the engraved images, and the molten images, he broke in pieces, and made dust of them, and strewed it on the graves [of those] who had sacrificed to them.
- 2 Chronicles 34:7 הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֥ים ptcl def.art + n c mp He broke down the altars, and beat the Asherim and the engraved images into powder, and hewed down all the sun-images throughout all the land of Israel, and returned to Jerusalem.
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 17:8 וְ/הָ/חַמָּנִֽים conj + ptcl def.art + n c mp They shall not look to the altars, the work of their hands; neither shall they have respect to that which their fingers have made, either the Asherim, or the sun-images.
- Isaiah 27:9 וְ/חַמָּנִֽים conj + n c mp Therefore by this shall the iniquity of Jacob be forgiven, and this is all the fruit of taking away his sin: that he makes all the stones of the altar as chalk stones that are beaten in sunder, [so that] the Asherim and the sun-images shall rise no more.
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 6:4 חַמָּֽנֵי/כֶ֑ם n c mp cs + sfx pers 2mp Your altars shall become desolate, and your sun-images shall be broken; and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.
- Ezekiel 6:6 חַמָּ֣נֵי/כֶ֔ם n c mp cs + sfx pers 2mp In all your dwelling-places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your sun-images may be hewn down, and your works may be abolished.
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.
חמן (chammân) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “incense altar.” Its English rendering has broadened — “images” classically, “incense altars” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 8 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. 2 Chronicles dominates its distribution — 3 of 8 verses. The lexical range runs to 2 senses — “incense altar” plus “sun-pillar”, “idol”, and “image”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2553 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 3 verses 38%
- Isaiah 2 verses 25%
- Ezekiel 2 verses 25%
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 8 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 38%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 13%
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: Images 6×
- American Standard Version: Sun-images 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Incense altars 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Incense altars 4×, Pillars 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2553 across 8 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2553 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2553 across 8 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 H2553 across 8 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.
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.
- incense altar, sun-pillar, idol, image
- used in idolatrous worship
Word origin
[ חַמָּן ] n.m. sun-pillar, used in idolatrous worship
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חמה (chammâh) (H2535) — sun.
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.
חַמָּן
- v. חַמָּה) solar columns, [prob. a phallus, cmp. חֲנִיסְנְסַיָּא]. Sifra B’har ch. IX, end (ref. to לא תקימו, Lev. XXVI, 1) אלו הח׳ וכ׳ that means the ḥammanim on roof-tops. Mekh. Bo, s. 11 (ref. to Ex. XII, 2 משכי מחַמָּנֵיכֶם withdraw from your ḥ. Ib. Yithro, s. 5, end לח׳. Ib. s. 6 מן הח׳ (ed. Weiss a. Fr. everywhere ע"ז). e.g. Leviticus 26:1
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 H2553 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| חַמָּ֣נֵי/כֶ֔ם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Ezekiel 6:6 | 2 |
| הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 14:5 | 1 |
| הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֥ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 34:7 | 1 |
| וְ/הַֽ/חַמָּנִ֛ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 34:4 | 1 |
| וְ/הָ/חַמָּנִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 17:8 | 1 |
| וְ/חַמָּנִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 27:9 | 1 |
| חַמָּֽנֵי/כֶ֑ם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Ezekiel 6:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2553, 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 → 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
