אֲחִיקָם
Ahikam
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Ahikam’ 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 H296 appears — 20 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.
2 Kings 3 verses
- 2 Kings 22:12 אֲחִיקָ֣ם n Proper The king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king's servant, saying,
- 2 Kings 22:14 וַ/אֲחִיקָ֨ם conj + n Proper So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah, went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe (now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter); and they talked with her.
- 2 Kings 25:22 אֲחִיקָ֥ם n Proper As for the people who were left in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left, even over them he made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, governor.
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Jeremiah 16 verses
- Jeremiah 26:24 אֲחִיקָ֣ם n Proper But the hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jeremiah, that they should not give him into the hand of the people to put him to death.
- Jeremiah 39:14 אֲחִיקָ֣ם n Proper they sent, and took Jeremiah out of the court of the guard, and committed him to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, that he should carry him home: so he lived among the people.
- Jeremiah 40:5 אֲחִיקָ֣ם n Proper Now while he was not yet gone back, Go back then, [said he], to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon has made governor over the cities of Judah, and dwell with him among the people; or go wherever it seems right to you to go. So the captain of the guard gave him food and a present, and let him go.
- Jeremiah 40:6 אֲחִיקָ֖ם n Proper Then went Jeremiah to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam to Mizpah, and lived with him among the people who were left in the land.
- Jeremiah 40:7 אֲחִיקָ֖ם n Proper Now when all the captains of the forces who were in the fields, even they and their men, heard that the king of Babylon had made Gedaliah the son of Ahikam governor in the land, and had committed to him men, and women, and children, and of the poorest of the land, of those who were not carried away captive to Babylon;
- Jeremiah 40:9 אֲחִיקָ֤ם n Proper Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan swore to them and to their men, saying, Don't be afraid to serve the Chaldeans: dwell in the land, and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.
- Jeremiah 40:11 אֲחִיקָ֥ם n Proper Likewise when all the Jews who were in Moab, and among the children of Ammon, and in Edom, and who were in all the countries, heard that the king of Babylon had left a remnant of Judah, and that he had set over them Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan;
- Jeremiah 40:14 אֲחִיקָֽם n Proper and said to him, Do you know that Baalis the king of the children of Ammon has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take your life? But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam didn't believe them.
- Jeremiah 40:16 אֲחִיקָם֙ n Proper But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah, You shall not do this thing; for you speak falsely of Ishmael.
- Jeremiah 41:1 אֲחִיקָ֖ם n Proper Now it happened in the seventh month, that Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, the son of Elishama, of the seed royal and [one of] the chief officers of the king, and ten men with him, came to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam to Mizpah; and there they ate bread together in Mizpah.
- Jeremiah 41:2 אֲחִיקָ֧ם n Proper Then arose Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and the ten men who were with him, and struck Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan with the sword, and killed him, whom the king of Babylon had made governor over the land.
- Jeremiah 41:6 אֲחִיקָֽם n Proper Ishmael the son of Nethaniah went forth from Mizpah to meet them, weeping all along as he went: and it happened, as he met them, he said to them, Come to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam.
- Jeremiah 41:10 אֲחִיקָ֑ם n Proper Then Ishmael carried away captive all the residue of the people who were in Mizpah, even the king's daughters, and all the people who remained in Mizpah, whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had committed to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam; Ishmael the son of Nethaniah carried them away captive, and departed to go over to the children of Ammon.
- Jeremiah 41:16 אֲחִיקָ֑ם n Proper Then took Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces who were with him, all the remnant of the people whom he had recovered from Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, from Mizpah, after that he had killed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, [to wit], the men of war, and the women, and the children, and the eunuchs, whom he had brought back from Gibeon:
- Jeremiah 41:18 אֲחִיקָ֔ם n Proper because of the Chaldeans; for they were afraid of them, because Ishmael the son of Nethaniah had killed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, whom the king of Babylon made governor over the land.
- Jeremiah 43:6 אֲחִיקָ֣ם n Proper the men, and the women, and the children, and the king's daughters, and every person who Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan; and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah;
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 אחיקם centers on the idea of “Ahikam.” Jeremiah dominates its distribution — 16 of 20 verses. Spanning 20 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at 2 Kings 22:12, it then recurs through the corpus. For the data behind this summary, explore 20-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H296 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 →
- 20
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 20 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,513
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,513 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 20 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Jeremiah 16 verses 80%
- 2 Kings 3 verses 15%
- 2 Chronicles 1 verse 5%
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 20 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 19 verses · 95%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 5%
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: Ahikam 20×
- American Standard Version: Ahikam 20×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ahikam 20×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ahikam 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H296 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H296 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H296 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H296 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 4 senses 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.
- Ahikam = "my brother has risen (arisen)"
- son of Shaphan, an officer in Josiah's reign
- protector of Jeremiah
- father of Gedaliah
Word origin
n.pr.m. (my brother has arisen) son of Shaphan, Josiah’s time 2 K 22:12, 14 2 Ch 34:20; protector of Jerem. Je 26:24; father of Gedaliah 2 K 25:22 Je 39:14; 40:5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16; 41:1, 2, 6, 10, 16, 18; 43:6.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אח (ʼâch) (H251) — brother.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms H296 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֲחִיקָ֣ם | Noun, Proper | 2 Chronicles 34:20 | 6 |
| אֲחִיקָ֖ם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 40:6 | 3 |
| אֲחִיקָ֑ם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 41:10 | 2 |
| אֲחִיקָ֥ם | Noun, Proper | 2 Kings 25:22 | 2 |
| אֲחִיקָֽם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 40:14 | 2 |
| אֲחִיקָ֔ם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 41:18 | 1 |
| אֲחִיקָ֤ם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 40:9 | 1 |
| אֲחִיקָ֧ם | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 41:2 | 1 |
| אֲחִיקָם֙ | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 40:16 | 1 |
| וַ/אֲחִיקָ֨ם | Noun, Proper | 2 Kings 22:14 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H296, 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
Shares the same root
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- אחאב ʼAchʼâb H256 Ahab
- אחבן ʼAchbân H257 Ahban
- אחוח ʼĂchôwach H265 Ahoah
- אחומי ʼĂchûwmay H267 Ahumai
- אחי ʼĂchîy H277 Ahi
- אחיאם ʼĂchîyʼâm H279 Ahiam
- אחיה ʼĂchîyâh H281 Ahijah
- אחיהוד ʼĂchîyhûwd H282 Ahihud
- אחיו ʼAchyôw H283 Ahio
- אחיחד ʼĂchîychud H284 Ahihud
- אחיטוב ʼĂchîyṭûwb H285 Ahitub
- אחילוד ʼĂchîylûwd H286 Ahilud
- אחימות ʼĂchîymôwth H287 Ahimoth
- אחימלך ʼĂchîymelek H288 Ahimelech
- אחימן ʼĂchîyman H289 Ahiman
- אחימעץ ʼĂchîymaʻats H290 Ahimaaz
- אחין ʼAchyân H291 Ahian
- אחינדב ʼĂchîynâdâb H292 Ahinadab
- אחינעם ʼĂchîynôʻam H293 Ahinoam
- אחיסמך ʼĂchîyçâmâk H294 Ahisamach
- אחיעזר ʼĂchîyʻezer H295 Ahiezer
- אחירם ʼĂchîyrâm H297 Ahiram
- אחירע ʼĂchîyraʻ H299 Ahira
- אחישחר ʼĂchîyshachar H300 Ahishahar
+2 more proper names from this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 31 — not the complete family. 26 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 (Ahikam). 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
Brother of support = helper, one of the five whom Josiah sent to consult the prophetess Huldah in connection with the discovery of the book of the law (2 Kings 22:12-14; 2 Chr. 34:20). He was the son of Shaphan, the royal secretary, and the father of Gedaliah, governor of Judea after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (2 Kings 25:22; Jer. 40:5-16; 43:6). On one occasion he protected Jeremiah against the fury of Jehoiakim (Jer. 26:24). It was in the chamber of another son (Germariah) of Shaphan that Baruch read in the ears of all the people Jeremiah's roll.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(a brother who raises up), son of Shaphan the scribe, an influential officer at the court of Josiah, was one of the delegates sent by Hilkaih to consult Huldah. (2 Kings 22:12-14) In the reign of Jehoiakim he successfully used his influence to protect the prophet Jeremiah. (Jeremiah 26:24) He was the father of Gedaliah. [Gedaliah] (B.C. 641).
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
a brother who raises up or avenges
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 20 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.
