אֲבִיגַ֫יִל
Abigail
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Abigail’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H26 appears — 17 distinct verses across 3 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.
1 Samuel 11 verses
- 1 Samuel 25:3 אֲבִגָ֑יִל n Proper Now the name of the man was Nabal; and the name of his wife Abigail; and the woman was of good understanding, and of a beautiful face: but the man was churlish and evil in his doings; and he was of the house of Caleb.
- 1 Samuel 25:14 וְ/לַ/אֲבִיגַ֨יִל֙ conj + prep + n Proper But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal's wife, saying, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to Greet our master; and he railed at them.
- 1 Samuel 25:18 אבוגיל אֲבִיגַ֡יִל n Proper n Proper Then Abigail made haste, and took two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched grain, and one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.
- 1 Samuel 25:23 אֲבִיגַ֨יִל֙ n Proper When Abigail saw David, she hurried, and alighted from her donkey, and fell before David on her face, and bowed herself to the ground.
- 1 Samuel 25:32 לַ/אֲבִיגַ֑ל prep + n Proper David said to Abigail, Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me:
- 1 Samuel 25:36 אֲבִיגַ֣יִל n Proper Abigail came to Nabal; and, behold, he held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken: therefore she told him nothing, less or more, until the morning light.
- 1 Samuel 25:39 בַּ/אֲבִיגַ֔יִל prep + n Proper When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be Yahweh, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from evil: and the evil-doing of Nabal has Yahweh returned on his own head. David sent and spoke concerning Abigail, to take her to him as wife.
- 1 Samuel 25:40 אֲבִיגַ֖יִל n Proper When the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spoke to her, saying, David has sent us to you, to take you to him as wife.
- 1 Samuel 25:42 אֲבִיגַ֗יִל n Proper Abigail hurried, and arose, and rode on a donkey, with five ladies of hers who followed her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife.
- 1 Samuel 27:3 וַ/אֲבִיגַ֥יִל conj + n Proper David lived with Achish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, even David with his two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the Carmelitess, Nabal's wife.
- 1 Samuel 30:5 וַ/אֲבִיגַ֕יִל conj + n Proper David's two wives were taken captive, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.
2 Samuel 3 verses
- 2 Samuel 2:2 וַ/אֲבִיגַ֕יִל conj + n Proper So David went up there, and his two wives also, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.
- 2 Samuel 3:3 ל/אביגל לַ/אֲֽבִיגַ֕יִל prep + n Proper prep + n Proper and his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur;
- 2 Samuel 17:25 אֲבִיגַ֣ל n Proper Absalom set Amasa over the host instead of Joab. Now Amasa was the son of a man, whose name was Ithra the Israelite, who went in to Abigail the daughter of Nahash, sister to Zeruiah, Joab's mother.
1 Chronicles 3 verses
- 1 Chronicles 2:16 וַ/אֲבִיגָ֑יִל conj + n Proper and their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail. The sons of Zeruiah: Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel, three.
- 1 Chronicles 2:17 וַ/אֲבִיגַ֕יִל conj + n Proper Abigail bore Amasa; and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite.
- 1 Chronicles 3:1 לַ/אֲבִיגַ֖יִל prep + n Proper Now these were the sons of David, who were born to him in Hebron: the firstborn, Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second, Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess;
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.
אביגיל (ʼĂbîygayil) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Abigail.” It clusters heavily in 1 Samuel, which alone accounts for 65% of its uses. With 17 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in 1 Samuel 25:3. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H26 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,563
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,563 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 11 verses 65%
- 2 Samuel 3 verses 18%
- 1 Chronicles 3 verses 18%
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 17 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 14 verses · 82%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 18%
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: Abigail 17×
- American Standard Version: Abigail 15×
- Berean Standard Bible: Abigail 17×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abigail 16×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H26 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H26 across 17 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H26 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H26 across 18 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 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 2 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.
- 1. wife of Nabal, then of David 1 S 25:14, 23, 39, 40, 42; 27:3; 30:5 2 S 2:2 1 Ch 3:1; = אֲבִגַיִל 1 S 25:3, 36 אֲבִו֯גַיִל v 18, אֲבִיגָ֑ל v 32, אֲבִיגַ֯לִ 2 S 3:3. e.g. 1 Samuel 25:14
- 2. sister of David 1 Ch 2:16, 17 = אֲבִיגַל 17:25. e.g. 1 Chronicles 2:16
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
n.pr.f. (my father is joy (?) orig. אבגל? (אֲבִגֵל?) cf. MT infr. & NöZMG 1883, 537 Anm2).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אב (ʼâb) (H1) — father.
Forms in the corpus
The 17 distinct written forms H26 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/אֲבִיגַ֕יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:17 | 3 |
| אֲבִגָ֑יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:3 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֖יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:40 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֗יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:42 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֡יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:18 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֣יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:36 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֣ל | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 17:25 | 1 |
| אֲבִיגַ֨יִל֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:23 | 1 |
| אבוגיל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:18 | 1 |
| בַּ/אֲבִיגַ֔יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:39 | 1 |
| וְ/לַ/אֲבִיגַ֨יִל֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:14 | 1 |
| וַ/אֲבִיגַ֥יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 27:3 | 1 |
| וַ/אֲבִיגָ֑יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:16 | 1 |
| ל/אביגל | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 3:3 | 1 |
| לַ/אֲֽבִיגַ֕יִל | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 3:3 | 1 |
| לַ/אֲבִיגַ֑ל | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 25:32 | 1 |
| לַ/אֲבִיגַ֖יִל | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 3:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H26, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- אבי ʼĂbîy H21 Abi
- אביאל ʼĂbîyʼêl H22 Abiel
- אביאסף ʼĂbîyʼâçâph H23 Abiasaph
- אבי גבעון ʼĂbîy Gibʻôwn H25 father of Gibeon
- אבידן ʼĂbîydân H27 Abidan
- אבידע ʼĂbîydâʻ H28 Abida
- אביה ʼĂbîyâh H29 Abijah
- אביהוא ʼĂbîyhûwʼ H30 Abihu
- אביהוד ʼĂbîyhûwd H31 Ahihud
- אביהיל ʼĂbîyhayil H32 Abihail
- אביטוב ʼĂbîyṭûwb H36 Abitub
- אביטל ʼĂbîyṭâl H37 Abital
- אבים ʼĂbîyâm H38 Abijam
- אבימאל ʼĂbîymâʼêl H39 Abimael
- אבימלך ʼĂbîymelek H40 Abimelech
- אבינדב ʼĂbîynâdâb H41 Abinadab
- אבינעם ʼĂbîynôʻam H42 Abinoam
- אביעזר ʼĂbîyʻezer H44 Abiezer
- אביעלבון ʼĂbîy-ʻalbôwn H45 Abialbon
- אבירם ʼĂbîyrâm H48 Abiram
- אבישג ʼĂbîyshag H49 Abishag
- אבישוע ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ H50 Abishua
- אבישור ʼĂbîyshûwr H51 Abishur
- אבישי ʼĂbîyshay H52 Abishai
+6 more proper names from this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 34 — not the complete family. 30 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Abigail). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Father (i.e., "leader") of the dance, or "of joy." (1.) The sister of David, and wife of Jether an Ishmaelite (1 Chr. 2:16, 17). She was the mother of Amasa (2 Sam. 17:25).
(2.) The wife of the churlish Nabal, who dwelt in the district of Carmel (1 Sam. 25:3). She showed great prudence and delicate management at a critical period of her husband's life. She was "a woman of good understanding, and of a beautiful countenance." After Nabal's death she became the wife of David (1 Sam. 25:14-42), and was his companion in all his future fortunes (1 Sam. 27:3; 30:5; 2 Sam. 2:2). By her David had a son called Chileab (2 Sam. 3:3), elsewhere called Daniel (1 Chr. 3:1).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(father, i.e. source, of joy).
+ The beautiful wife of Nabal, a wealthy owner of goats and sheep in Carmel. (B.C. 1060.) When David's messengers were slighted by Nabal, Abigail supplies David and his followers with provisions, and succeeded in appeasing his anger. The days after this Nabal died, and David sent for Abigail and made her his wife. (1 Samuel 25:14) etc. By her he had a son, called Chileab in (2 Samuel 3:3) but Daniel in (1 Chronicles 3:1) + A sister of David, married to Jether the Ishmaelite, and mother, by him, of Amasa. (1 Chronicles 2:17) In (2 Samuel 17:25) for Israelite read Ishmaelite. (B.C. 1068.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
the father's joy
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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.
