חׇפְשִׁי
free
‘free’ is one of 3 main senses 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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H2670 appears in the Book of Job — 2 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.
Job
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.
חפשי (chophshîy) is a Hebrew adjective most often rendered “free.” Scripture first uses it in Exodus 21:2. It turns up in 17 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. It concentrates in Jeremiah, which alone accounts for 29% of its uses. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2670 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.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Jeremiah 5 verses 29%
- Exodus 4 verses 24%
- Deuteronomy 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.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 41%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 41%
- 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: Free 15×
- American Standard Version: Free 11×, Go free 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Free 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Free 11×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2670 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2670 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H2670 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 4 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2670 across 12 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.
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. free from slavery: of Hebrew bondslave (male or female) set free in 7th year Ex 21:2, 5 (JE), Dt 15:12, 13, 18, cf. Je 34:9, 10, 11, 14, 16; of slave (male or female) set free on account of injury done Ex 21:26, 27 (JE); עֶבֶד ח׳ מֵאֲדֹנָיו Jb 3:19 a slave is free from his master (i.e. in Sheʾôl); but בַּמֵּתִים חָפְשִׁי ψ 88:6 among the dead I am free (i.e. adrift, cut off from Yahweh’s remembrance); more gen., שַׁלַּח רְצוּצִים חָפְשִׁים Is 58:6 to let oppressed ones go free. e.g. Exodus 21:2
- 2. free from taxes, obligations, etc. אֵת בֵּית אָבִיו יַעֲשֶׂה חָפְשִׁי בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל 1 S 17:25 his father’s house will he make free in Israel. e.g. 1 Samuel 17:25
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
adj. free (NH id.)—ח׳ Ex 21:5 + 10 times + ψ 88:6; pl. חָפְשִׁים Is 58:6 + 4 times—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חפש (châphash) (H2666) — to be free.
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.
חָפְשִׁי
- preced.)
- 1. fem. freedom. Pesik. R. s. 8 (ref. to Zeph. I, 12) מוציא אני אותה לח׳ I shall lead her out to liberty (v. preced.); a. fr.— masc. free, exempt. Nidd. 61ᵇ, a. e. (ref. to Ps. LXXXVIII, 6) כיון … נעשה ח׳ וכ׳ when one is dead, one is free from religious duties. Tanḥ. Emor 2 (ref. to ויתחפש, I Sam. XXVIII, 8) נעשה ה׳ מן המלכות divested himself of the (insignia of) government; Lev. R. s. 26 (not למלכות); Midr. Sam. ch. XXIV, v. פָּגָנִיקָא; a. fr. e.g. Zephaniah 1:12
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 11 distinct written forms H2670 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| חָפְשִׁ֖י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 15:12 | 4 |
| חָפְשִׁ֑ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 34:9 | 2 |
| חָפְשִׁ֔ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 58:6 | 2 |
| לַֽ/חָפְשִׁ֥י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 21:26 | 2 |
| חָ֫פְשִׁ֥י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 88:5 | 1 |
| חָפְשִׁ֑י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 39:5 | 1 |
| חָפְשִׁ֖ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 34:16 | 1 |
| חָפְשִׁ֥י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 3:19 | 1 |
| חָפְשִֽׁי | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 21:5 | 1 |
| חָפְשִׁי֙ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 15:18 | 1 |
| לַֽ/חָפְשִׁ֖י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 21:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2670, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
