טָלָא
to spot
‘to spot’ is one of 2 main senses 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”). Here: ‘of spotted’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 3 times (38%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (25%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (25%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (13%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 8 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H2921 appears — 6 distinct verses across 3 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 4 verses
- Genesis 30:32 וְ/טָל֗וּא וְ/טָל֥וּא conj + Qal ptcp.pass ms conj + Qal ptcp.pass ms I will pass through all your flock today, removing from there every speckled and spotted one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats. This will be my hire.
- Genesis 30:33 וְ/טָל֜וּא conj + Qal ptcp.pass ms So my righteousness will answer for me hereafter, when you come concerning my hire that is before you. Everyone that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, that might be with me, will be counted stolen."
- Genesis 30:35 וְ/הַ/טְּלֻאִ֗ים וְ/הַ/טְּלֻאֹ֔ת conj + ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.pass mp conj + ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.pass fp That day, he removed the male goats that were streaked and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black ones among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons.
- Genesis 30:39 וּ/טְלֻאִֽים conj + Qal ptcp.pass mp The flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks brought forth streaked, speckled, and spotted.
Joshua 1 verse
Ezekiel 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.
The Hebrew verb טלא centers on the idea of “to spot.” Genesis dominates its distribution — 4 of 6 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 6 verses — uncommon. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Pual, and more). Its English rendering has broadened — “spotted” classically, “or spotted” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. Dig into 6-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2921 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 33%
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: Spotted 6×
- American Standard Version: Spotted 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Or spotted 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Spotted 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2921 across 8 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 H2921 across 8 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 H2921 across 8 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2921 across 9 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.
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. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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.
Qal
- chiefly of spotted, variegated sheep and goats; of high places, variegated (gaily-coloured shrines)
Pual
- . patched, of sandals
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
[ טָלָא ] vb. patch, spot
— 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.
טָלָא
- , v. טלי.—[Targ. Y. Lev. XVI, 27, v. טַלְיָא.]
טְלֵי
- (preced.)
- 1. to lift up. Koh. R. to IX, 5 טְלִי טליתיך lift up thy cloak (Ber. 18ᵃ דלי־).—[
- 2. to sport, v. טְלַל II.]
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 8 distinct written forms H2921 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/הַ/טְּלֻאִ֗ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 30:35 | 1 |
| וְ/הַ/טְּלֻאֹ֔ת | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 30:35 | 1 |
| וְ/טָל֗וּא | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 30:32 | 1 |
| וְ/טָל֜וּא | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 30:33 | 1 |
| וְ/טָל֥וּא | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 30:32 | 1 |
| וּ/טְלֻאִֽים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 30:39 | 1 |
| וּ/מְטֻלָּאוֹת֙ | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Joshua 9:5 | 1 |
| טְלֻא֔וֹת | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H2921, 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 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
