יְאֹר
river
also: stream, canal, Nile, Nile-canal fuller range ↓
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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H2975 appears in the Book of Ezekiel — 6 distinct verses. 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.
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 29:3 יְאֹרָ֑י/ו יְאֹרִ֖/י n c mp cs + sfx pers 3ms n Proper + sfx pers 1cs speak, and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster that lies in the midst of his rivers, that has said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself.
- Ezekiel 29:4 יְאֹרֶ֖י/ךָ יְאֹרֶ֔י/ךָ יְאֹרֶ֔י/ךָ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms I will put hooks in your jaws, and I will cause the fish of your rivers to stick to your scales; and I will bring you up out of the midst of your rivers, with all the fish of your rivers which stick to your scales.
- Ezekiel 29:5 יְאֹרֶ֔י/ךָ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms I will cast you forth into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your rivers: you shall fall on the open field; you shall not be brought together, nor gathered; I have given you for food to the animals of the earth and to the birds of the sky.
- Ezekiel 29:9 יְאֹ֥ר n Proper The land of Egypt shall be a desolation and a waste; and they shall know that I am Yahweh. Because he has said, The river is mine, and I have made it;
- Ezekiel 29:10 יְאֹרֶ֑י/ךָ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms therefore, behold, I am against you, and against your rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt an utter waste and desolation, from the tower of Seveneh even to the border of Ethiopia.
- Ezekiel 30:12 יְאֹרִים֙ n c mp I will make the rivers dry, and will sell the land into the hand of evil men; and I will make the land desolate, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I, Yahweh, have spoken it.
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.
At its core, יאר (yᵉʼôr) means “river.” The King James Version usually renders it “river,” while modern versions prefer “nile” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. With 48 verses in 12 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Exodus (35% of all occurrences). Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “stream”, “canal”, and “Nile”. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2975 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 →
- 48
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 48 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #597
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 597 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 48 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 48 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 22 verses · 46%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 21 verses · 44%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 10%
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: River 29×, Rivers 10×, Brooks 5×
- American Standard Version: River 23×, Rivers 8×, Nile 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Nile 25×, River 10×, Streams 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: River 33×, Nile 7×, Stream 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2975 across 64 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 H2975 across 65 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 H2975 across 62 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2975 across 66 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 6 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.
- 1. stream of the Nile, river Nile, usually c. art. Gn 41:1, 2, 3(×2), 17, 18 Ex 1:22; 2:3, 5(×2); 4:9(×2); 7:15, 17, 18(×3), 20(×2), 21(×3), 24(×2), 28; 8:5, 7; 17:5 (all JE), Am 8:8; 9:5 Is 19:7(×3), 8; 23:3 (‖ שִׁחֹר), v 10 Je 46:7, 8 (sim. of Egyptian invasion), Ez 29:3b (read יאר, v. supr.), v 9 Zc 10:11; more fully יְאֹר מִצְרַיִם Am 8:8; 9:5. e.g. Genesis 41:1
- 2. pl.:
- a. 3, יְאֹרֵי מִצְרַים Is 7:18; יְאֹרֵי מָצוֹר 19:6 (‖ נְהָרוֹת), 37:25 = 2 K 19:24; v. also Na 3:8 Ex 7:19; 8:1 (both P; ‖ נְהָרֹת, אֲגַמִּים etc.), ψ 78:44 (‖ נֹזְלִים), Ez 29:3, 4(×2), 5, 10 + v 4 MT (but del. 𝔊 Co), 30:12. e.g. Isaiah 7:18
- b. watercourses in gen., יְאֹרִים רַחֲבֵי יָדָ֑יִם Is 33:21 (‖ נְהָרִים; cf. NH יְאוֹר, late Aramaic יְאוֹרָא). e.g. Isaiah 33:21
- 3. shafts, made in mining Jb 28:10 (בַּצּוּרוֹת). e.g. Job 28:10
- 4. יְאֹר, sg., of Tigris, Dn 12:5(×2), 6, 7 (cf. 10:4). e.g. Daniel 12:5
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
n.m. Ex 7:21 stream of the Nile, stream, canal (Egyptian loan-word = Egyptian ’iotr, ’ioʾr, watercourse, Copt. eioor, ior; also ’iotrʿo, ’io’rʿo, Copt. eiero, iaro, Nile, SteindorffBAs i. 612; in Assyrian i̯a’uru, stream, ’Iaruʾû, river Nile, Id.ib., Hptib. 171 Jägerib 466)—abs. הַיְאֹר Gn 41:1 + 37 times; הַיְאוֹר Is 19:8; הַיְ֫אֹרָה Ex 1:22; יְאוֹר Is 19:7(×3) + 2 times; כָּאֹר (error for כַּיְאֹר) Am 8:8; cstr. כִּיאֹר Am 9:5; כִּיאוֹר Am 8:8; sf. יְאֹרִי Ez 29:3 b (Co יאר, cf. v 9 and 𝔖 𝔗); pl. יְאֹרִים Ex 8:1 + 4 times; cstr. יְאֹרֵי Is 7:18 + 2 times; יְאוֹרֵי 2 K 19:24; sf. יְאֹרֶיךָ Ez 29:4(×2), 5 + v 4 (del. 𝔊 Co) + 29:10 (Co יְאֹרְךָ); יְאֹרָיו Ez 29:3; יְאֹרֵיהֶם Ex 7:19 ψ 78:44;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: of Egyptian origin
Forms in the corpus
The 38 distinct written forms H2975 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 47 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 48 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 41:1
- Exodus 1:22
- 2 Kings 19:24
- Job 28:10
- Isaiah 7:18
- Jeremiah 46:7
- Ezekiel 29:3
- Daniel 12:5
- Amos 8:8
- Nahum 3:8
- Zechariah 10:11
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.
