חׇרְמָה
Hormah
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Hormah’ 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 H2767 appears — 9 distinct verses across 6 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.
Numbers 2 verses
- Numbers 14:45 הַֽ/חָרְמָֽה ptcl def.art + n Proper Then the Amalekite came down, and the Canaanite who lived in that mountain, and struck them and beat them down, even to Hormah.
- Numbers 21:3 חָרְמָֽה n Proper Yahweh listened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and the name of the place was called Hormah.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Joshua 3 verses
Judges 1 verse
1 Samuel 1 verse
1 Chronicles 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.
“Hormah” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name חרמה (Chormâh). Scripture first uses it in Numbers 14:45. It appears 9 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a third of its appearances fall in Joshua. See 9-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2767 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Joshua 3 verses 33%
- Numbers 2 verses 22%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 56%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 33%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 11%
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: Hormah 8×
- American Standard Version: Hormah 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Hormah 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Hormah 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2767 across 9 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2767 across 9 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 H2767 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2767 across 9 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 BDB
The 2 senses 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.
- Hormah = "devotion"
- a town of the Canaanites, conquered by Joshua, allotted to Judah, and located in the south of Judah
Word origin
n.pr.loc. (asylum, cf. Arabic id., WetzstZKW v. 1884, 115)—a royal city of Canaanites, in the South, in tribe of Simeon Nu 14:45 (JE; art. only here v. Di), 21:3 (J) where name expl. from Israel’s devoting Canaanites of Arad to destruction; Jos 15:30; 19:4 (P), Dt 1:44 Jos 12:14 (D), 1 S 30:30 1 Ch 4:30; originally called צְפַת Ju 1:17, where name is said to have been changed to Ḥormah because Judah and Simeon (after death of Joshua) devoted its inhabitants to destruction, v. Di Nu 21:3.—On site v. צְפַת.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חרם (châram) (H2763) — to ban.
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.
חָרְמָא
- (b. h.) Hormah (Destruction, v. preced.). Targ. Num. XXI, 3 (ed. Berl. חוּרְמָה). Targ. O. ib. XIV, 45 (ed. Berl. חור׳; Y. שֵׁצְיוּ).
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 6 distinct written forms H2767 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| חָרְמָֽה | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 1:44 | 3 |
| וְ/חָרְמָֽה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:30 | 2 |
| בְּ/חָרְמָ֛ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 30:30 | 1 |
| הַֽ/חָרְמָֽה | Noun, Proper | Numbers 14:45 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/חָרְמָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:30 | 1 |
| חָרְמָה֙ | Noun, Proper | Joshua 12:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2767, 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.
- חרומף chărûwmaph H2739 Harumaph
- חרם Chŏrêm H2765 Horem
- חרם Chârim H2766 Harim
- חרמון Chermôwn H2768 Hermon
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. 4 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 (Hormah). 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
Banning; i.e., placing under a "ban," or devoting to utter destruction. After the manifestation of God's anger against the Israelites, on account of their rebellion and their murmurings when the spies returned to the camp at Kadesh, in the wilderness of Paran, with an evil report of the land, they quickly repented of their conduct, and presumed to go up "to the head of the mountain," seeking to enter the Promised Land, but without the presence of the Lord, without the ark of the convenant, and without Moses. The Amalekites and the Canaanites came down and "smote and discomfited them even unto Hormah" (Num. 14:45). This place, or perhaps the watch-tower commanding it, was originally called Zephath (Judg. 1:17), the modern Sebaiteh. Afterwards (Num. 21:1-3) Arad, the king of the Canaanites, at the close of the wanderings, when the Israelites were a second time encamped at Kadesh, "fought against them, and took some of them prisoners." But Israel vowed a vow unto the Lord utterly to destroy the cities of the Canaanites; they "banned" them, and hence the place was now called Hormah. But this "ban" was not fully executed till the time of Joshua, who finally conquered the king of this district, so that the ancient name Zephath became "Hormah" (Josh. 12:14; Judg. 1:17).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(a place laid waste), or Zephath, (Judges 1:17) was the chief town of a king of a Canaanitish tribe on the south of Palestine, which was reduced by Joshua, and became a city of the territory of Judah, (Joshua 15:30; 1 Samuel 30:30) but apparently belonged to Simeon. (1 Chronicles 4:30)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
devoted or consecrated to God; utter destruction
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
