חֵן
grace
also: favour, charm fuller range ↓
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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H2580 appears in the Book of Ruth — 3 distinct verses. 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.
Ruth
- Ruth 2:2 חֵ֖ן n c ms Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor. She said to her, Go, my daughter.
- Ruth 2:10 חֵ֤ן n c ms Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your sight, that you should take knowledge of me, seeing I am a foreigner?
- Ruth 2:13 חֵ֨ן n c ms Then she said, Let me find favor in your sight, my lord, because you have comforted me, and because you have spoken kindly to your handmaid, though I am not as one of your handmaidens.
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, חן (chên) means “grace.” The King James Version usually renders it “grace,” while modern versions prefer “favor” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. With 67 verses in 16 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 6:8. Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “favour” and “charm”. Dig into 67-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2580 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 →
- 67
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 67 distinct verses.
- 16 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 16 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #575
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 575 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 67 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 67 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 26 verses · 39%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 26 verses · 39%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 15 verses · 22%
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 3 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†: Grace 37×, Favour 25×
- American Standard Version†: Favor 40×, Grace 11×, Now i have found favor 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Favor 47×, Grace 9×, Gracious 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Favor 55×, Grace 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2580 across 68† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H2580 across 69† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2580 across 66† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2580 across 68† 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.
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 6 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
חן I
- 1. favour, grace, elegance:
- a. of form and appearance, of a woman ‖ יֹ֑פִי Pr 31:30; אֵשֶׁת חֵן Pr 11:16; זונה טובת חן Na 3:4; of a doe Pr 5:19; precious stone אבן חן Pr 17:8; of ornaments Pr 1:9 = 4:9, 3:22. e.g. Proverbs 31:30
- b. of speech, lips ψ 45:3 Pr 22:11; words Ec 10:12. e.g. Psalms 45:3
- 2. favour, acceptance:
- a. with men Pr 13:15; 22:1; Ec 9:11. e.g. Proverbs 13:15
- b. with God Zc 4:7(×2); 12:10; chiefly in phrases: מצא חן בעיני find favour in the eyes of: (1) men Gn 30:27; 32:6; 33:8, 10, 15; 34:11; 39:4; 47:25, 29; 50:4 Nu 32:5 (all J); Dt 24:1; Ru 2:2, 10, 13; 1 S 1:18; 16:22; 20:3, 29; 25:8; 27:5; 2 S 14:22; 16:4; 1 K 11:19; Est 5:8; 7:3; (2) of God Gn 6:8; 18:3; 19:19; Ex 33:12, 13(×2), 16, 17; 34:9 Nu 11:11, 15 (all J); Ju 6:17; 2 S 15:25; Pr 3:4; abs. מצא חן (with man) Pr 28:23; (with God) Je 31:2; מצא חן לפניו Est 8:5 (i.e. of the king); נתן חן בעיני give favour in the eyes of (1) man Gn 39:21; Ex 3:21; 11:3; 12:36 (J); abs. נתן חן of man ψ 84:12; (2) of God Pr 3:34; נשׂא חֵן בְּעֵינֵי obtain favour in the eyes of Est 2:15; of the king 5:2; so וַתִּשָּׂא־חֵן וָחֶסֶד לְפָנָיו Est 2:17. e.g. Zechariah 4:7
חן II m. (favour)
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
II. n.m. ψ 45:3 favour, grace;—ח׳ Gn 6:8 + 67 times; sf. חִנּוֹ Gn 39:21;—
III. n.pr.m. (favour)—contemp. of Zerubbabel Zc 6:14, so RV SS We, but RVm Ew Hi Ke Or grace, favour, kindness.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חנן (chânan) (H2603) — to be gracious.
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.
חָן
- , v. חָנָה a. חָנַן.
חַן
- , v. חֲנַן
חֵן
- grace, favor; loveliness. Ab. Zar. 20ᵃ (ref. to תחנם, Deut. VII, 2) לא תתן להם חן ascribe no gracefulness to them (pay no attention to their beauty). Yeb. 63ᵇ (quot. fr. Ben. Sira) אשת חן coquette. Keth. 17ᵃ; Snh. 14ᵃ, v. יַעֲלָה. Succ. 49ᵇ אדם שיש עליו חן (Ms. M. לו; Var. חסד) a person that makes a favorable impression on men. Ber. 60ᵇ ותנני … לחן וכ׳ and let me find grace and favor &c. Keth. 77ᵇ אם חן מעלה וכ׳ if the Law makes pleasing those who study it, will it not also protect them?—Y. Gitt. V, 46ᵈ top מפני חִינָּהּ וכ׳ for the sake of her grace (to raise her estimation in the eyes of men), that people may be anxious to marry her; v. next w.—Gen. R. s. 34, end שנתן חן וכ׳ who made every place attractive to its inhabitants; a. fr.—Pl. חִינּוֹת, חִינִּין. Sot. 47ᵃ ג׳ ח׳ הן וכ׳ there are three remarkable favors, the favor in which the inhabitants hold their place &c.; Y. Yoma IV, beg. 41ᵇ e.g. Deuteronomy 7:2
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 17 distinct written forms H2580 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 H2580, 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
- חנה chânâh H2583 to encamp
- חנון channûwn H2587 gracious
- חנות channôwth H2589 to be gracious
- חנינה chănîynâh H2594 compassion
- חנן chănan H2604 to show favour
- תחנה tᵉchinnâh H8467 supplication
- תחנון tachănûwn H8469 supplication
Derived from this word
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- חנה Channâh H2584 Hannah
- חנון Chânûwn H2586 Hanun
- חניאל Channîyʼêl H2592 Hanniel
- חנן Chânân H2605 Hanan
- חננאל Chănanʼêl H2606 Hananeel
- חנני Chănânîy H2607 Hanani
- חנניה Chănanyâh H2608 Hananiah
- חנתן Channâthôn H2615 Hannathon
- חן Chên H2581 Hen
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 20 — not the complete family. 9 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 67 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 67 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 6:8
- Exodus 3:21
- Numbers 11:11
- Deuteronomy 24:1
- Judges 6:17
- Ruth 2:2
- 1 Samuel 1:18
- 2 Samuel 14:22
- 1 Kings 11:19
- Esther 2:15
- Psalms 45:2
- Proverbs 1:9
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.
