חָמָס
violence
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
3 verses where H2555 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Jeremiah. 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.
Jeremiah
- Jeremiah 6:7 חָמָ֣ס n c ms As a well casts forth its waters, so she casts forth her wickedness: violence and destruction is heard in her; before me continually is sickness and wounds.
- Jeremiah 20:8 חָמָ֥ס n c ms For as often as I speak, I cry out; I cry, Violence and destruction! because the word of Yahweh is made a reproach to me, and a derision, all the day.
- Jeremiah 51:46 וְ/חָמָ֣ס conj + n c ms Don't let your heart faint, neither fear for the news that shall be heard in the land; for news shall come one year, and after that in another year [shall come] news, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
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 noun חמס centers on the idea of “violence.” Debuting at Genesis 6:11, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 59 verses in 20 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Sharing its root, it stands alongside חמס and תחמס. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2555 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 →
- 59
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 59 distinct verses.
- 20 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 20 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #639
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 639 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 59 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 59 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 29 verses · 49%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 24 verses · 41%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 10%
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: Violence 34×, Violent 7×, Cruelty 4×
- American Standard Version: Violence 38×, Violent 3×, Thou deliverest me from the violent 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Violence 47×, Violent 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Violence 47×, Violence of 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2555 across 59 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2555 across 59 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 H2555 across 60 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 H2555 across 61 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.
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.
- violence, wrong, cruelty, injustice
Word origin
n.m. ψ 7:17 violence, wrong—abs. ח׳ Gn 6:11 + 44 times; cstr. חֲמַס Ju 9:24 + 7 times; sf. חֲמָסִי Gn 16:5; Je 51:35 (in both = wrong done to me); חֲמָסוֹ ψ 7:17; pl. חֲמָסִים 2 S 22:49 + 3 times;—violence specif. of physical violence Ju 9:24; 2 S 22:3 (not ‖ ψ 18:3), Ob10, Hb 1:9; Je 51:35 (of Chaldeans), Hb 2:8, 17(×2) Jo 4:19 ψ 72:14; but also wrong, incl. injurious language, harsh treatment, etc. Gn 16:5 (J, of wrong done to Sarah by Hagar), Jb 19:7 Mal 2:16; in gen. of rude wickedness of men, their noisy, wild, ruthlessness Mi 6:12 Hb 1:2; Zp 1:9 Pr 10:6, 11; 13:2; 26:6 + Ez 7:11 (si vera l., v. Co), ‖ שֹׁד Am 3:10; Hb 1:3; Je 6:7; 20:8; Ez 45:9; Is 60:18, ‖ רִיב ψ 55:10, ‖ עָמָל 7:17, ‖ גַּאֲוָה 73:6, אֹהֵב ח׳ 11:5 (‖ רָשָׁע), denied, of servant of י׳ Is 53:9, ח׳ בארץ Je 51:46, cf. Gn 6:11, 13 (P), Ez 8:17; 12:19; מָֽלְאוּ מַחֲשַׁכֵּי־אֶרֶץ נְאוֹת ח׳ ψ 74:20, הָעִיר מָֽלְאָה ח׳ Ez 7:23; 28:16, שֶׁבֶת ח׳ Am 6:3 is (prob.) enthronement of violence; כְּלֵי ח׳ Gn 49:5 (poem) instruments, weapons, of violence;—other phrases are: ח׳ בְּיָדַיִם Jon 3:8; 1 Ch 12:17, cf. Jb 16:17, ח׳ יְדֵיכֶם ψ 58:3 and פֹּעַל ח׳ בְּכַפֵּיהֶם Is 59:6; עֵד ח׳ i.e. a witness that promotes violence and wrong Ex 23:1 (JE), Dt 19:16, עֵדֵי ח׳ ψ 35:11; עֵדֵי שֶׁקֶר וִיפֵחַ חָמָס ψ 27:12; שׂנאת ח׳ ψ 25:19 = hatred characterized by violence; אִישׁ חָמָס = violent man ψ 18:49 (2 S 22:49 has the later א׳ חמסים, cf. infr.) 140:12 Pr 3:31; 16:29; אישׁ חמסים (later) ψ 140:2, 5; 2 S 22:49; יֵין חֲמָסִים Pr 4:17 i.e. wine gained by violence (‖ לֶחֶם רֶשַׁע).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חמס (châmaç) (H2554) — to wrong.
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.
חמס
- , Ukts. III, 5, v. חֲמָם
חָמַס
- v. Ges. H. Dict.10 s. v.) [to be heated, passionate,] to insult, do violence, to rob. Y. Ab. Zar. II, 40ᵈ bot. לא סוף … אלא חֲמוֹס וכ׳ finally one does not say to another man, Kill that man, but, Attack &c. Gen. R. s. 45 (ref. to חמסי, ib. XVI, 5) חוֹמְסֵנִי את בדברים וכ׳ thou provokest me to speak harshly, because thou seest &c. Gen. R. s. 65, beg. מלכות … גוזלת וחוֹמֶסֶת the wicked government (Rome) robs and extorts; a. fr.—Lev. R. s. 26 דור ודור וחוֹמְסָיו each generation with its violent men.—Part. pass. חָמוּס. Ib. s. 30 גזול אני ח׳ אני I have been taken by force, by extortion.
- to be ruined (cmp. חָבַל). Lam. R. to II, 6 כגנה שנ׳ מעיינה וכ׳ like a garden the spring of which has been ruined, so that its vegetables fade.
- (of beasts of prey) to seize with fangs, scratch with nails. Gen. R. s. 45 (play on חמסי, v. supra) חִימְּסָה פניו Ar. (ed. בפניו, some ed. חימסא, incorr.) she scratched his face; Y’lamd. to Gen. l. c. (quot. in Ar.) חיטטה אותו וחימסה פניו כנמיה she scratched him and marked his face like a marten; Yalk. ib. 79 (not חומסה).
חֲמַס
- —Denom. חומָסָא.
- to do violence to one’s self, to restrain one’s self. Targ. II Esth. V, 10, v. חֲמַם. [Targ. Y. Gen. VII, 21 אתחמסי, read: אִתְמְסִי or אִתְהַמְסִי, v. מְסִי.]
חָמָס
- preced.) violence, extortion. Y. B. Mets. IV, 9ᶜ bot. (ref. to Gen. VI, 13) מה היה חֲמָסָן what was the nature of their violence? Gen. R. s. 31 (distinction between ח׳ a. גֶּזֶל); a. e.—Pl. חֲמָסִים. Gen. R. s. 65 … שלא גזילות ח׳ that thou wilt not give me to eat what has been obtained by robbery or extortion. Lev. R. s. 2. Koh. R. to III, 9; a. e. e.g. Genesis 6:13
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 30 distinct written forms H2555 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2555, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 52 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 59 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 6:11
- Exodus 23:1
- Deuteronomy 19:16
- Judges 9:24
- 2 Samuel 22:3
- 1 Chronicles 12:17
- Job 16:17
- Psalms 7:16
- Proverbs 3:31
- Isaiah 53:9
- Jeremiah 6:7
- Ezekiel 7:11
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.
