יָבָל
Jabal
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Jabal’ 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 H2989 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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
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.
“Jabal” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name יבל (Yâbâl). It is rare — just 1 verse in the entire Hebrew Bible. It clusters heavily in Genesis, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Its lone occurrence is Genesis 4:20. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H2989 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 100%
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†: Jabal 1×
- American Standard Version†: Jabal 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Jabal 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Jabal 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H2989 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H2989 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H2989 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H2989 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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 0 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.
יבל I [m.] watercourse, stream (proposes conduit), as irrigating
יבל II m. son of Lamech by Adah, and founder of pastoral life according to Gn 4
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
I. n.[m.] watercourse, stream (proposes conduit), as irrigating;—only pl. cstr. יִבְלֵי(־)מָ֑יִם Is 30:25 (‖ פְּלָגִים), 44:4.
II. n.pr.m. son of Lamech by Adah, and founder of pastoral life according to Gn 4:20 (J); 𝔊 Ιωβελ, 𝔊L Ιωβηλ.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from יבל (yâbâl) (H2988) — stream.
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.
יָבַל I
- (b. h.) [to break through, come forth, run, flow.—V. יְבוּל, יִבְלָא &c.]
- to lead; to carry, bring. Sifré Deut. 43 (ref. to יבולה, Deut. XI, 17) אף לא מה שאתה מוֹבִיל לה not even as much as thou carriest to it (as seed); Yalk. ib. 869. R. Hash. 9ᵇ, v. דּוּר ch.—Part. pass. מוּבָל one carried, unable to move, feetless &c. Toh. VII, 5 אפי׳ מ׳ אפי׳ כפות even if he is unable to move, even if he is tied; Tosef. ib. VIII, 7 והלה מוּוָל או כפות ed. Zuck. (ed. ממלאו, read: מוול או); Y. Ḥag. II, end, 78ᶜ אפי׳ מאכל ואפי׳ כסות (corr. acc.). [For הוֹבִיל to study, v. בִּיל h.] e.g. Deuteronomy 11:17
יְבַל
- , Af. אוֹבִיל, אֵיבֵיל (הֵיבֵל), אַיְיבֵל ch. same. Targ. Ps. LXVI, 6. Targ. Is. X, 32 (v. infra); a. fr.—Erub. 27ᵇ, a. e. מוֹבִילְנָא מאניה וכ׳ I will carry his clothes after him to the bath-house. Snh. 95ᵃ (ref. to ינפף, Is. l. c.) מוֹבִיל ומייתי וכ׳ moving his hand to and back (= h. מוליך ומביא, v. בּוֹא); a. fr.—[Ezra V, 14; VI, 5.]—Y. Meg. IV, 75ᵇ bot. כד דאינן תרתייתי מֵיבֵל וכ׳ when two scrolls are used, he carries one away and brings another in; Y. Sot. VII, end, 22ᵃ תרתיי תו מַיְיבֵל (corr. acc.); Y. Yoma VIII, 44ᵇ top מייכל (corr. acc.). Y. Sot. l. c. מַיְיבְלִין, v. אוֹרָיָיא. Y. Taan. III, 66ᵈ bot. הוה מַיְיבְלָהּ וכ׳ (not מייבללה) brought it thither.—[Y. Ab. Zar. III, 43ᵃ נייבל, v. בִּיל ch. e.g. Ezra 5:14
- to be carried. Targ. Is. XXXIX, 6.
יָבַל II
- Pi. יִיבֵּל (denom. of יַבֶּלֶת) to cut off dry twigs, warts &c., to trim. Shebi. II, 2 מְיַבְּלִין מפרקין (Ms. M. a. Y. ed. מְזַבְּלִין, incorr.); expl. Y. ib. 33ᵈ top, v. יַבֶּלֶת.
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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Jabal). 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
A stream, a descendant of Cain, and brother of Jubal; "the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle" (Gen. 4:20). This description indicates that he led a wandering life.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(stream), the son of Lamech and Adah, (Genesis 4:20) and brother of Jubal. He is described as the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
which glides away
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.
