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יָטַב

to be good

also: be pleasing, be well, be glad fuller range ↓

H3190 Strong's Hebrew
yâṭab Transliteration
/yaw-tab'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 112 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

יטב — transliterated yâṭab — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to be good.” Where the King James Version says “pleased,” newer translations reach for “and” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 105 verses — common. Debuting at Genesis 4:7, it then recurs through the corpus. Across 2 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Hithpael). See the sense tree, 105-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
be accepted
Modern gloss
to be good
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H3190 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 →

105
distinct verses
The word appears in 105 distinct verses.
26 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 26 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 4:7
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 4:7.
Zechariah 8:15
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Zechariah 8:15.
#387
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 387 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 105 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 35 · 33%
  • Historical 31 · 30%
  • Wisdom 12 · 11%
  • Prophets 27 · 26%

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 105 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 49 verses · 47%
  • Torah (Pentateuch) 35 verses · 33%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 21 verses · 20%

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: Pleased 11×, Do good 4×, Well 4×
  • American Standard Version: Pleased 7×, Thee 6×, Do good 5×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Pleased 5×, Correct 4×, May go well 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 13×, Was good 12×, Do good 11×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H3190 across 110 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Pleased” 11×
  • “Do good” 4×
  • “Well” 4×
  • “Amend” 3×
  • “May be well” 3×
  • “May go well” 3×
  • “Shall be well” 3×
  • “Thee that it may be well” 3×
  • “Be merry” 2×
  • “Better” 2×
  • “Diligently” 2×
  • “Do well” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 66 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 H3190 across 109 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Pleased” 7×
  • “Thee” 6×
  • “Do good” 5×
  • “Amend” 4×
  • “It” 4×
  • “Well” 3×
  • “Be merry” 2×
  • “Better” 2×
  • “Doest thou well” 2×
  • “May be well” 2×
  • “May go well” 2×
  • “Me” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 64 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 H3190 across 110 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Pleased” 5×
  • “Correct” 4×
  • “May go well” 4×
  • “Do good” 3×
  • “Is good” 3×
  • “May be well” 3×
  • “Skillfully” 3×
  • “Thoroughly” 3×
  • “Well” 3×
  • “Any right” 2×
  • “I will make you prosper” 2×
  • “Were pleased” 2×

Plus 73 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 7 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H3190 across 140 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “And” 13×
  • “Was good” 12×
  • “Do good” 11×
  • “Good” 7×
  • “Is good” 6×
  • “May go well” 5×
  • “Thoroughly” 4×
  • “Be good” 3×
  • “Makes” 3×
  • “Well” 3×
  • “Will go well” 3×
  • “Are doing well of” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 48 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


9 senses and sub-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 Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).

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 9 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

  • 1. be glad, joyful
  • 2. be well placed
  • 3. impers. be well for or with, go well with
  • 4. be pleasing

Hithpael

  • 1. make glad, rejoice
  • 2. do good to, deal well with
  • 3. do well or thoroughly
  • 4. make a thing good, right, beautiful
  • 5. do well, right, ethically

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

[ יָטַב ] vb. be good, well, glad, pleasing

— 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

Part of speech: Verb TWOT: 863


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.

יָטַב

  • (v. next w.), part. Hof. מוּטָב, q. v.

יְטַב

  • (cmp. טוב) to be good, well. Impf. יֵיטַב. Targ. O. Gen. XII, 13 ed. Berl. (ed. יוֹטִיב, Y. יֵיטִיב). Targ. O. Deut. IV, 40 (Y. יוֹטֵיב); a. fr.
    • 1. same, v. supra.—2)
    • to do good, be kind. Targ. Gen. XXXII, 10; a. fr.—3) to do a thing well. Targ. I Sam. XVI, 17 מוֹטִיב לנגנא who plays well. Targ. Gen. VI, 7; a. e.

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 82 distinct written forms H3190 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
וַ/יִּיטַב֙ Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Esther 1:21 4
יִ֣יטַב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 5:16 4
יִיטַ֥ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 5:29 4
הֵיטִ֖יבוּ Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural Deuteronomy 5:28 3
הֵיטֵ֔ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Deuteronomy 9:21 3
וַ/יִּיטַ֖ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 Samuel 3:36 3
וַ/יִּיטַ֥ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 1:23 3
יִֽיטַב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Genesis 12:13 3
הֵיטִ֥יבוּ Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural Jeremiah 7:3 2
הֵיטֵ֑ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Deuteronomy 13:14 2
הֵיטֵ֥ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Genesis 32:12 2
וְ/יִטַ֥ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 Kings 25:24 2
וַ/יִּיטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Joshua 22:33 2
וַ/יִּיטַ֧ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Esther 2:4 2
יִיטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 4:40 2
יֵיטִ֣ב Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Proverbs 15:13 2
יֵיטִ֥יב Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Judges 17:13 2
לְ/הֵיטִ֔יב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct Jeremiah 13:23 2
לְ/הֵיטִ֥יב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct Jeremiah 18:10 2
אֵיטִ֖יב Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular Genesis 32:12 1
בְּ/הֵיטִיב֛/וֹ Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct Exodus 30:7 1
הֲ/תֵֽיטְבִי֙ Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular Nahum 3:8 1
הֵיטִ֖יב Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Genesis 12:16 1
הֵיטִ֣יבָ/ה Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular Psalms 51:18 1
הֵיטִ֤יבִי Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular Isaiah 23:16 1
הֵיטִ֤יבוּ Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural Jeremiah 26:13 1
הֵיטִ֥יב Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Joshua 24:20 1
הֵיטֵ֖יב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Jeremiah 10:5 1
הֵיטֵ֛ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Isaiah 1:17 1
הֵיטֵֽב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Deuteronomy 27:8 1
הֵיטֵיב֙ Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Jeremiah 7:5 1
הֵיטַ֛בְתְּ Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular Ruth 3:10 1
הֵיטַ֣בְתָּ Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular Jeremiah 1:12 1
הַ/הֵיטֵ֖ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Jonah 4:4 1
הַ/הֵיטֵ֥ב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute Jonah 4:9 1
הַ/יִּיטַ֖ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Leviticus 10:19 1
וְ/אֵיטִ֥יבָה Verb, Hiphil, Cohortative, 1st Person, Common, Singular Genesis 32:9 1
וְ/הֵטַ֣בְנוּ Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural Numbers 10:29 1
וְ/הֵטַ֥בְנוּ Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural Numbers 10:32 1
וְ/הֵיטִ֣יבוּ Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural Jeremiah 35:15 1
וְ/הֵיטִ֤ב Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 Samuel 25:31 1
וְ/הֵיטִ֥יבוּ Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural Jeremiah 18:11 1
וְ/הֵיטִֽבְ/ךָ֥ Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 30:5 1
וְ/יִ֥יטַב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Jeremiah 38:20 1
וְ/יִטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Jussive, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 Kings 21:7 1
וְ/יִיטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Judges 19:9 1
וְ/יִיטַ֥ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Jeremiah 40:9 1
וְ/תִיטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular Psalms 69:31 1
וִֽ/יטִֽיבְ/ךָ֤ Verb, Hiphil, Jussive, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Ecclesiastes 11:9 1
וַ/יִּֽיטְב֥וּ Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural Genesis 34:18 1
וַ/יִּיטַ֤ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Nehemiah 2:6 1
וַ/יֵּ֥יטֶב Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Exodus 1:20 1
וַ/תִּיטַ֨ב Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular Esther 2:9 1
וַ/תֵּ֣יטֶב Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 Kings 9:30 1
וּ/לְ/הֵיטִ֖יב Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct Jeremiah 4:22 1
יְיֵטִֽיב Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Job 24:21 1
יִ֥יטַב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Ecclesiastes 7:3 1
יִטַ֣ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 Samuel 24:4 1
יִיטַ֤ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 12:25 1
יִיטַ֨ב Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular Deuteronomy 12:28 1

The 60 most common forms are shown; 22 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.


Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3190, 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

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 98 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 105 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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