חָשַׁק
to love
also: be attached to, long for fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 5 times (45%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (9%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2836 appears — 11 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Exodus 3 verses
- Exodus 27:17 מְחֻשָּׁקִ֣ים Pual ptcp.pass mp All the pillars of the court round about shall be filleted with silver; their hooks of silver, and their sockets of brass.
- Exodus 38:17 מְחֻשָּׁקִ֣ים Pual ptcp.pass mp The sockets for the pillars were of brass. The hooks of the pillars and their fillets were of silver; and the overlaying of their capitals, of silver; and all the pillars of the court were filleted with silver.
- Exodus 38:28 וְ/חִשַּׁ֥ק conj + Piel pf 3ms Of the one thousand seven hundred seventy-five shekels he made hooks for the pillars, overlaid their capitals, and made fillets for them.
Deuteronomy 3 verses
- Deuteronomy 7:7 חָשַׁ֧ק Qal pf 3ms Yahweh didn't set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples:
- Deuteronomy 10:15 חָשַׁ֥ק Qal pf 3ms Only Yahweh had a delight in your fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples, as at this day.
- Deuteronomy 21:11 וְ/חָשַׁקְתָּ֣ conj + Qal wpf 2ms and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire to her, and would take her to you as wife;
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Isaiah 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.
חשק (châshaq) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to love.” Scripture first uses it in Genesis 34:8. It turns up in 11 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. It concentrates in Exodus, which alone accounts for 27% of its uses. Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “be attached to” and “long for”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2836 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 3 verses 27%
- Deuteronomy 3 verses 27%
- Genesis 1 verse 9%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 64%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 18%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 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: Desired 2×
- American Standard Version: Desired 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Desired 1×, Has set his affection 1×, He loves 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He desired 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2836 across 11 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2836 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H2836 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2836 across 11 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
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 1 sense 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
- Pf. ח׳ Dt 7:7 + 4 times; חָֽשְׁקָה Gn 34:8; חָשַׁקְתָּ Is 38:17 (but v. infr.); וְחָֽשַׁקְתָּ֫ Dt 21:11;—be attached to, only fig. = love, a woman sq. בְּ Gn 34:8 (P) Dt 21:11; elsewhere of י׳’s love for Israel Dt 7:7; 10:15, and of love to י׳ ψ 91:14; sq. acc. cogn. + לְ and inf. כל־חֵשֶׁק שְׁלֹמה אשׁר ח׳ לִבְנוֹת 1 K 9:19 = 2 Ch 8:6; חָשַׁקְתָּ נַפְשִׁי מִשַּׁחַת Is 38:17 lit. thou hast loved my soul out of the pit, i.e. lovingly delivered it; but read חָשַׂכְתָּ thou hast held back, kept, from 𝔊 𝔙 Lo Ew Che Di, or חֲשׂךְ hold back (Imv.), so Du. e.g. Deuteronomy 7:7
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
vb. be attached to, love (NH press together, desire (rare); Aramaic חֲשַׁק bind, saddle (an ass))—
— 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.
חָשַׁק
- (b. h.) to press, tie, surround. Ab. Zar. 35ᵃ (ref. to Cant. I, 2) חֲשׁוֹק שׂפתותיך זו בזו press thy lips together and be not too hasty in replying.—2) (cmp. חָפַץ) to be attached to, in love with; to elect. Tosef. Yeb. VIII, 4 חָשְׁקָה … בתורה my soul has chosen the Law (as bride); Yeb. 63ᵇ. Ḥull. 89ᵃ (ref. to Deut. VII, 7) חוֹשְׁקַנִי בכם I elected you. e.g. Song of Solomon 1:2
חֲשַׁק
- , to bandage, saddle, harness. Targ. II Sam. XIX, 27.—Part. pass. חָשֵׁיק, pl. חֲשִׁיקִין, f. חֲשִׁיקַן. Targ. Jud. XIX, 10. Ib. V, 10.
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 9 distinct written forms H2836 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| חָשַׁק֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 9:19 | 2 |
| מְחֻשָּׁקִ֣ים | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 27:17 | 2 |
| וְ/חִשַּׁ֥ק | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Exodus 38:28 | 1 |
| וְ/חָשַׁקְתָּ֣ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 21:11 | 1 |
| חָ֭שַׁק | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 91:14 | 1 |
| חָֽשְׁקָ֤ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Genesis 34:8 | 1 |
| חָשַׁ֤קְתָּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 38:17 | 1 |
| חָשַׁ֥ק | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 10:15 | 1 |
| חָשַׁ֧ק | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 7:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2836, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
