טַף
little children
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
8 verses where H2945 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Numbers. Filtered view — show all forms. 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 14:3 וְ/טַפֵּ֖/נוּ conj + n c ms cs + sfx pers 1cp Why does Yahweh bring us to this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will be a prey: wouldn't it be better for us to return into Egypt?
- Numbers 14:31 וְ/טַ֨פְּ/כֶ֔ם conj + n c ms cs + sfx pers 2mp But your little ones, that you said should be a prey, them will I bring in, and they shall know the land which you have rejected.
- Numbers 16:27 וְ/טַפָּֽ/ם conj + n c ms cs + sfx pers 3mp So they got them up from the tent of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side: and Dathan and Abiram came out, and stood at the door of their tents, and their wives, and their sons, and their little ones.
- Numbers 31:9 טַפָּ֑/ם n c ms cs + sfx pers 3mp The children of Israel took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods, they took for a prey.
- Numbers 32:16 לְ/טַפֵּֽ/נוּ prep + n c ms cs + sfx pers 1cp They came near to him, and said, We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle, and cities for our little ones:
- Numbers 32:17 טַפֵּ֨/נוּ֙ n c ms cs + sfx pers 1cp but we ourselves will be ready armed to go before the children of Israel, until we have brought them to their place: and our little ones shall dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land.
- Numbers 32:24 לְ/טַפְּ/כֶ֔ם prep + n c ms cs + sfx pers 2mp Build you cities for your little ones, and folds for your sheep; and do that which has proceeded out of your mouth.
- Numbers 32:26 טַפֵּ֣/נוּ n c ms cs + sfx pers 1cp Our little ones, our wives, our flocks, and all our cattle, shall be there in the cities of Gilead;
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.
טף (ṭaph) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “little children.” Debuting at Genesis 34:29, it then recurs through the corpus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 42 verses — moderately common. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2945 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 →
- 42
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 42 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #864
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 864 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 42 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 10 verses 24%
- Genesis 8 verses 19%
- Deuteronomy 7 verses 17%
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 42 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 28 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 21%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 12%
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†: Little ones 19×, Children 9×, Little children 3×
- American Standard Version†: Little ones 22×, Children 4×, All their little ones 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Children 21×, Little ones 10×, Young children 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Children 26×, Little ones 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2945 across 42† 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 H2945 across 42† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H2945 across 41† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2945 across 40† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- children, little children, little ones
Word origin
n.m. coll. children (as going with quick, tripping steps; Ethiopic ጣፍ: Di 1251)—טַף Je 41:16 + 11 times; טָ֑ף Je 40:7 + 5 times; sf. טַפֵּנוּ Gn 43:8 + 5 times; טַפְּכֶם Gn 45:19 + 10 times; טַפָּם Gn 34:29 + 6 times; never cstr. and never pl. (in Gn 47:24 om. 𝔊, cf. Di);—children, little ones, Gn 34:29 (E) + 18 times JE (Gn Ex Nu), also Dt 1:39 + 8 times D (incl. Jos 1:14; 8:35); P only Nu 31:9, 17, 18, where note זָכָר בַּטָּ֑ף v 17 = young boys, and הַטַּף בַּנָּשִׁים v 18 = young girls; also Ju 18:21; 21:10 2 S 15:22 Je 40:7; 41:16; 43:6 Ez 9:6 2 Ch 20:13; 31:18 Ezr 8:21 Est 3:13; 8:11; the words מְתִים וְנָשִׁים וְהַטָּ֑ף Dt 2:34; 3:6 incl. all inhabitants; so אֲנָשִׁים וְהַנָּשִׁים וְהַטָּף Dt 31:12 Je 40:7; 43:6; טַף distinguished from בָּחוּר וּבְתוּלָה Ez 9:6; also from בְּנֵיהֶם 2 Ch 20:13, and from בְּנֵיהֶם וּבְנוֹתֵיהֶם 2 Ch 31:18. Note that the word includes (or implies) women as well as children, in foll.: Gn 47:12 Ex 12:37 (E), 10:10, 24 (J), Nu 32:16, 17 (JE; cf. Di on v 26).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from טפף (ṭâphaph) (H2952) — to skip.
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.
טַף
- collect. pl. (b. h.; טָפַף I; cmp. טפל) [joined to, dependent,] children. Ḥag. 3ᵃ (ref. to Deut. XXXI, 12) טף למה באין why must the children come?; Tosef. Sot. VII, 9 טף למה בא (Var. טְפֵלִין … באין); Ab. d’R. N. ch. XVIII. Mekh. Bo. s. 16 וכי טף היה יודע וכ׳ would children have known to distinguish &c.? e.g. Deuteronomy 31:12
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 37 distinct written forms H2945 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 41 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 42 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
- Genesis 34:29
- Exodus 10:10
- Numbers 14:3
- Deuteronomy 1:39
- Joshua 1:14
- Judges 18:21
- 2 Samuel 15:22
- 2 Chronicles 20:13
- Ezra 8:21
- Esther 3:13
- Jeremiah 40:7
- Ezekiel 9:6
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.
