יָכַח
to reprove
‘to reprove’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘decide’
- Hophal
- The passive counterpart of the Hiphil (“he was caused to…”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H3198 appears in the Book of Micah — 2 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.
Micah
- Micah 4:3 וְ/הוֹכִ֛יחַ conj + Hiphil wpf 3ms And he will judge between many peoples, And will decide concerning strong nations afar off. They will beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, Neither will they learn war any more.
- Micah 6:2 יִתְוַכָּֽח Hithpael impf 3ms Hear, you mountains, Yahweh's controversy, And you enduring foundations of the earth; For Yahweh has a controversy with his people, And he will contend with Israel.
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.
“to reprove” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb יכח (yâkach). Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 4 stems, among them Hiphil and Hophal. It turns up in 55 verses across 15 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Job, which alone accounts for 27% of its uses. First canonically at Genesis 20:16, it enters the text early. See the sense tree, 55-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3198 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 →
- 55
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 55 distinct verses.
- 15 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 15 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #647
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 647 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 55 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 55 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 33 verses · 60%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 15 verses · 27%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 13%
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: Reprove 8×, Rebuke 5×, He that rebuketh 2×
- American Standard Version: Rebuke 4×, Reprove 4×, Decide 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Rebuke 5×, Arbitrate 2×, He rebuked 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Rebuke 5×, Correct 2×, Correcting 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3198 across 58 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 39 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3198 across 57 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 37 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 H3198 across 56 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 39 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 H3198 across 71 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 44 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 Hophal (the passive of Hiphil) and 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.
Hiphil
- 1. decide, judge
- 2. adjudge, appoint
- 3. shew to be right, prove
- 4. convince, convict
- 5. reprove, chide
- 6. correct, rebuke
Hophal
- . he is chastened also with pain
Niphal
- . come now and let us reason together; there an upright man might reason with him; and thou art set right, righted, justified
Hithpael
- . with Israel he will argue
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
[ יָכַח ] vb. Hiph. decide, adjudge, prove
— 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
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.
יָכַח
- v. כֹּחַ) to be firm, stand, be right.—Denom. נֹכַח.
- [to place opposite,]
- 1. to admonish, reprove. Ber. 31ᵃ sq. (ref. to I Sam. I, 14) מכאן … שצריך להוֹכִיחוֹ from here we learn that he who sees in his neighbor something unbecoming, is bound to admonish him; Arakh. 16ᵇ. Ib. הוֹכִיחוֹ … ויוֹכִיהֶנּוּ if he did admonish him and he did not heed it, he must do it again. Ib. … תמיהני שיודע להוכיח I wonder whether there is in this generation one who knows how to admonish; a. fr. e.g. 1 Samuel 1:14
- 2. to prove, to serve as an analogy. B. Kam. 6ᵃ אש תּוֹכִיחַ let the law concerning incendiary (Ex. XXII, 5) be taken as a standard (it being the result of human action); בור תוכיח let the law about a pit (ib. XXI, 33) decide (it being stationary). Kidd. 7ᵃ; a. v. fr.— to be evidence, to show. M. Kat. 4ᵇ זיבלו מוֹכִיחַ עליו his dung shows what he is about doing; a. fr. e.g. Exodus 22:5
- , Nithpa. נִתְוַוכֵּחַ to argue, be justified. Lev. R. s. 27 בא הקב"ה לה׳ וכ׳ the Lord came to argue with Israel; ib. כלום אינון יכולין לה׳ עם בוראן can they argue (successfully) with their Creator?; Num. R. s. 10, beg.; a. fr.
- same. Cant. R. to V, 16 מי יוכל לִיוָּכֵחַ וכ׳ (not לוו׳) who dares to argue with &c.
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 49 distinct written forms H3198 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3198, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 55 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 55 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 20:16
- Leviticus 19:17
- 2 Samuel 7:14
- 2 Kings 19:4
- 1 Chronicles 12:17
- Job 5:17
- Psalms 6:1
- Proverbs 3:12
- Isaiah 1:18
- Jeremiah 2:19
- Ezekiel 3:26
- Hosea 4:4
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.
