חָנַט
to embalm
also: spice, make spicy 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (40%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (20%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2590 appears — 4 distinct verses across 2 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 3 verses
- Genesis 50:2 לַ/חֲנֹ֖ט וַ/יַּחַנְט֥וּ prep + Qal inf.cs conj + Qal wimpf 3mp Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel.
- Genesis 50:3 הַ/חֲנֻטִ֑ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Forty days were fulfilled for him, for that is how many the days it takes to embalm. The Egyptians wept for him for seventy days.
- Genesis 50:26 וַ/יַּחַנְט֣וּ conj + Qal wimpf 3mp So Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
Song of Solomon 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.
“to embalm” is the headline sense of the Hebrew word חנט (chânaṭ). With only 4 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Genesis. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 50:2. Not a single-sense word, it carries 3 senses, among them “spice” and “make spicy”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2590 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 3 verses 75%
- Song of Solomon 1 verse 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 4 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 25%
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†: Are embalmed 1×, Embalm 1×, Embalmed 1×
- American Standard Version†: Embalm 1×, Embalmed 1×, Embalming 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Embalm 1×, Embalmed him 1×, Embalming 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Embalm 1×, Embalmed 1×, Embalmings 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2590 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2590 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2590 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2590 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 0 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.
חנט I spice, make spicy, embalm
חנט II embalming
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
חָנַט vb. spice, make spicy, embalm
חֲנֻטִים n.[m.]pl.abstr. embalming, only Gn 50:3 i.e. days consumed in the embalming process
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
חָנַט
- (b. h.)
- 1. to assume shape, form a texture; (of trees) to show a distinct shape of fruits, to form fruits; (of fruits and leaves) to assume a distinct shape (v. חֲנָטָה). R. Hash. 14ᵇ אתרוג שחָנְטוּ פירותיו Ms. M. (ed. פירותיה) an Ethrog-tree whose fruits were formed before the fifteenth of Shebat. Ib. אילן שחנטו וכ׳ a tree whose fruits &c. Y. Shebi. V, beg. 35ᵈ אילן שח׳ a tree which formed fruits. Tosef. Shebi. IV, 20; a. fr.
- 2. [to be handsome; (Arab.) to be red,] to make handsome, or flagrant, esp. toembalm. Gen. R. s. 100.
חֲנַט
- , to embalm. Targ. O. Gen. L, 2 (Y. בסם); a. e.—Taan. 5ᵇ וכי בכדי … חַנְטוּ חנטייא was it for nothing that … the embalmers embalmed (Jacob)?
חֶנֶט
- (preced. wds.) formation of fruits or leaves. Y. Shebi. IV, end 35ᶜ, a. e. שלשולן הוא חַנְטָן their formation of chains is what in other trees is the formation of fruits. Ib. V, beg. 35ᵈ עקרתה חַנְטוֹ thou disregardest the time of its formation. Y. Maasr. V, 51ᵈ bot. בח׳ והשרשה as regards the law regulating the tithes according to the time of the formation of fruits and of taking root.—R. Hash. 15ᵇ אחר חנטה לשביעית for the laws concerning the fruits of the Sabbatical year the formation of fruits is the deciding mark. Ib.ᵃ (in Chald. diction) זיל בתר ח׳ be guided by &c. Men. 69ᵃ ח׳ דפירא the formation of the fruit, ח׳ דעלה the formation of the texture of leaves; v. הֲנָצָה.
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 5 distinct written forms H2590 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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/חֲנֻטִ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 50:3 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּחַנְט֣וּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Genesis 50:26 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּחַנְט֥וּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Genesis 50:2 | 1 |
| חָֽנְטָ֣ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Song of Solomon 2:13 | 1 |
| לַ/חֲנֹ֖ט | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Genesis 50:2 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
