חָשָׁה
to be silent
also: quiet, still, inactive fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘exhibit silence’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘be silent’
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- 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”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 9 distinct
- Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 4 times (25%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (13%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (6%)
+1 more form (1 occurrence)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2814 appears — 16 distinct verses across 7 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.
Judges 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Kings 3 verses
- 2 Kings 2:3 הֶחֱשֽׁוּ Hiphil impv 2mp The sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh will take away your master from your head today?" He said, "Yes, I know it; hold your peace."
- 2 Kings 2:5 הֶחֱשֽׁוּ Hiphil impv 2mp The sons of the prophets who were at Jericho came near to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that Yahweh will take away your master from your head today?" He answered, "Yes, I know it. Hold your peace."
- 2 Kings 7:9 מַחְשִׁ֗ים Hiphil ptcp.act mp Then they said one to another, We aren't doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we hold our peace: if we wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us; now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household.
Nehemiah 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 28:1 תֶּֽחֱשֶׁ֥ה Qal impf 2ms To you, Yahweh, I call. My rock, don't be deaf to me; Lest, if you are silent to me, I would become like those who go down into the pit.
- Psalms 39:2 הֶחֱשֵׁ֣יתִי Hiphil pf 1cs I was mute with silence. I held my peace, even from good. My sorrow was stirred.
- Psalms 107:29 וַ֝/יֶּחֱשׁ֗וּ conj + Qal wimpf 3mp He makes the storm a calm, So that its waves are still.
Ecclesiastes 1 verse
Isaiah 6 verses
- Isaiah 42:14 הֶחֱשֵׁ֨יתִי֙ Hiphil pf 1cs I have long time held my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: [now] will I cry out like a travailing woman; I will gasp and pant together.
- Isaiah 57:11 מַחְשֶׁה֙ Hiphil ptcp.act ms Of whom have you been afraid and in fear, that you lie, and have not remembered me, nor laid it to your heart? Haven't I held my peace even of long time, and you don't fear me?
- Isaiah 62:1 אֶחֱשֶׁ֔ה Qal impf 1cs For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns.
- Isaiah 62:6 יֶחֱשׁ֑וּ Qal impf 3mp I have set watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day nor night: you who call on Yahweh, take no rest,
- Isaiah 64:12 תֶּחֱשֶׁ֥ה Qal impf 2ms Will you refrain yourself for these things, Yahweh? will you hold your peace, and afflict us very sore?
- Isaiah 65:6 אֶחֱשֶׂה֙ Qal impf 1cs Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but will recompense, yes, I will recompense into their bosom,
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 be silent” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb חשה (châshâh). First canonically at Judges 18:9, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 16 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Isaiah. Across 2 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Hiphil). See the sense tree, 16-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2814 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 16 occurrences in the concordance →
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 16 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 69%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 31%
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: Hold ye your peace 2×
- American Standard Version: I know it 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Be silent 2×, Do not speak 2×, Keep silent 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be silent 5×, Be quiet 2×, Being silent 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2814 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H2814 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H2814 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2814 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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 4 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.
Qal
- be silent
Hiphil
- 1. exhibit silence, be silent
- 2. shew inactivity
- 3. causat. make still, quiet
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
[ חָשָׁה ] vb. be silent, inactive, still (chiefly poet. and late)
— 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.
חָשָׁה
- , v. חשי
חשי
- (b. h.) [to whisper,] be silent, quiet (cmp. דום, דמם). Part. (fr. חוּשׁ) חָשׁ, f. חָשָׁה, pl. חָשׁוֹת. Ḥag. 12ᵇ אומרות … וחשות ביום וכ׳ say praise by night, and are silent by day. Ib. 13ᵇ (play on ח̇ש̇מ̇ל̇) חיות עתים ח̇ש̇ות … ממ̇ל̇לות Ms. M. Ḥayoth (v. חַיָּה I end) who at times are silent etc.
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 14 distinct written forms H2814 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 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.
