חֶשְׁבּוֹן
Heshbon
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Heshbon’ 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 H2809 appears in the Book of Numbers — 8 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.
Numbers
- Numbers 21:25 בְּ/חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן prep + n Proper Israel took all these cities: and Israel lived in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the towns of it.
- Numbers 21:26 חֶשְׁבּ֔וֹן n Proper For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land out of his hand, even to the Arnon.
- Numbers 21:27 חֶשְׁבּ֑וֹן n Proper Therefore those who speak in proverbs say, Come you to Heshbon; Let the city of Sihon be built and established:
- Numbers 21:28 מֵֽ/חֶשְׁבּ֔וֹן prep + n Proper For a fire is gone out of Heshbon, A flame from the city of Sihon: It has devoured Ar of Moab, The lords of the high places of the Arnon.
- Numbers 21:30 חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן n Proper We have shot at them; Heshbon is perished even to Dibon, We have laid waste even to Nophah, Which [reaches] to Medeba.
- Numbers 21:34 בְּ/חֶשְׁבּֽוֹן prep + n Proper Yahweh said to Moses, Don't fear him: for I have delivered him into your hand, and all his people, and his land; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.
- Numbers 32:3 וְ/חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן conj + n Proper Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah, and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Sebam, and Nebo, and Beon,
- Numbers 32:37 חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן n Proper The children of Reuben built Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Kiriathaim,
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.
The Hebrew name חשבון centers on the idea of “Heshbon.” Debuting at Numbers 21:25, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 37 verses across 9 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its moderately common vocabulary. Dig into 37-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2809 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 →
- 37
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 37 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #947
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 947 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 37 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Joshua 9 verses 24%
- Numbers 8 verses 22%
- Deuteronomy 8 verses 22%
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 37 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 49%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 16 verses · 43%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 8%
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†: Heshbon 38×
- American Standard Version†: Heshbon 35×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Heshbon 36×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Heshbon 33×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2809 across 38† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2809 across 38† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H2809 across 38† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2809 across 33† 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.
חשבון I reckoning, account (NH Aramaic id.) Ec 9
חשבון II loc. of the city of Sihon king of the Amorites Nu 21
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
I. n.m. reckoning, account (NH Aramaic id.) Ec 9:10, בקּשׁ ח׳ Ec 7:25, מצא ח׳ Ec 7:27.
II. n.pr.loc. of the city of Sihon king of the Amorites Nu 21:26, 27, 28, 30, 34; 32:3 (all E); Dt 1:4; 2:24, 26, 30; 3:2, 6; 4:46; 29:6 Jos 9:10; 12:2, 5; 13:10, 21, 27 (all D) Ju 11:19 Je 48:45 Ne 9:22; captured by Israel who dwelt in it Nu 21:25 (E) Ju 11:26; rebuilt by Reuben Nu 32:37 (E), given to Reuben at the division of the land Jos 13:17 (P); on the border of Gad, Jos 13:26 (P), it subsequently fell to Gad and was assigned to Levites out of that tribe Jos 21:39 (P) 1 Ch 6:66; the Moabites gained possession of it Is 15:4; 16:8, 9 and subsequently the Ammonites Je 48:2, 34, 45; 49:3; it was celebrated for its ponds Ct 7:5.—Mod. Ḥusbân, SeetzenReisen i. 407 RobBR i. 551 BdPal 191 SurveyEP 8.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חשבון (cheshbôwn) (H2808) — reckoning.
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.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
- preced. wds.)
- 1. account, sum; accountability; punishment and reward. B. Bath. 9ᵇ ח׳ גדול sum total. Ib. 78ᵇ (play on Ḥeshbon, Num. XXI, 27; 30) באו ונחשב חֶשְׁבּוֹנוֹ וכ׳ come and let us examine the account of the world (human affairs), the loss etc. Ib. אבד ח׳ וכ׳ the accountability of the world is gone (there is no reward or punishment). Ex. R. s. 51, beg., a. fr. ליתן ח׳ to render an account. Tosef. B. Kam. X, 21 מה ח׳ עשה וכ׳ how our father settled with yon; Y. ib. X, 7ᵇ bot.—Y. Ab. Zar. II, 42ᵃ top ח׳ מים וכ׳ he understands the calculation of the action of the water. Ib. ח׳ גדול הוא this is a great thing to calculate; a. fr. e.g. Numbers 21:27
- 2. promptness in business. Deut. R. s. 4 איני מכיר חֶשְׁבּוֹנְךָ I do not know your way of settling (whether you are prompt); ib. עשית לי ח׳ טוב you paid me promptly. [Yalk. Deut. 808 הח׳ read בעל הח׳ market commissioner.]—Pl. חֶשְׁבּוֹנוֹת. Sabb. 150ᵃ, sq., v. חָשַׁב. Bekh. 5ᵃ בקי בח׳ a good arithmetician.
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 20 distinct written forms H2809 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ/חֶשְׁבּ֑וֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 1:4 | 5 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֔וֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 2:30 | 5 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֑וֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 2:26 | 4 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן | Noun, Proper | Isaiah 16:9 | 3 |
| חֶשְׁבּוֹן֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 6:81 | 3 |
| בְּ/חֶשְׁבּ֗וֹן | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 48:2 | 2 |
| בְּ/חֶשְׁבּֽוֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 3:2 | 2 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֜וֹן | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 48:34 | 2 |
| בְּ/חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן | Noun, Proper | Numbers 21:25 | 1 |
| בְּ/חֶשְׁבּ֨וֹן | Noun, Proper | Judges 11:26 | 1 |
| וְ/חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן | Noun, Proper | Numbers 32:3 | 1 |
| וּ/מֵ/חֶשְׁבּ֛וֹן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 13:26 | 1 |
| חֶ֠שְׁבּוֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 29:7 | 1 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֛וֹן | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 48:45 | 1 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֥וֹן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 13:17 | 1 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֧וֹן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 2:24 | 1 |
| חֶשְׁבּ֨וֹן | Noun, Proper | Isaiah 16:8 | 1 |
| חֶשְׁבּֽוֹן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 12:5 | 1 |
| מֵ/חֶשְׁבּ֗וֹן | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 48:45 | 1 |
| מֵֽ/חֶשְׁבּ֔וֹן | Noun, Proper | Numbers 21:28 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2809, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 2 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 (Heshbon). 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
Intelligence, a city ruled over by Sihon, king of the Amorites (Josh. 3:10; 13:17). It was taken by Moses (Num. 21:23-26), and became afterwards a Levitical city (Josh. 21:39) in the tribe of Reuben (Num. 32:37). After the Exile it was taken possession of by the Moabites (Isa. 15:4; Jer. 48:2, 34, 45). The ruins of this town are still seen about 20 miles east of Jordan from the north end of the Dead Sea. There are reservoirs in this district, which are probably the "fishpools" referred to in Cant. 7:4.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(stronghold), the capital city of Sihon king of the Amorites. (Numbers 21:26) It stood on the western border of the high plain--Mishor, (Joshua 13:17)--and on the boundary line between the tribes of Reuben and Gad. The ruins of Hesban, 20 miles east of the Jordan, on the parallel of the northern end of the Dead Sea mark the site, as they bear the name; of the ancient Heshbon. There are many cisterns among the ruins. Comp. (Song of Solomon 7:4)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
invention; industry
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 33 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 37 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
- Numbers 21:25
- Deuteronomy 1:4
- Joshua 9:10
- Judges 11:19
- Song of Solomon 7:4
- Isaiah 15:4
- Jeremiah 48:2
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.
