אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ
Ahasuerus
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Ahasuerus’ 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 H325 appears — 30 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.
Ezra 1 verse
Esther 28 verses
- Esther 1:1 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ אֲחַשְׁוֵר֗וֹשׁ n Proper n Proper Now it happened in the days of Ahasuerus (this is Ahasuerus who reigned from India even to Ethiopia, over one hundred twenty-seven provinces),
- Esther 1:2 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֗וֹשׁ n Proper that in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace,
- Esther 1:9 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֽוֹשׁ n Proper Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to king Ahasuerus.
- Esther 1:10 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֽוֹשׁ n Proper On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcass, the seven chamberlains who ministered in the presence of Ahasuerus the king,
- Esther 1:15 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper What shall we do to the queen Vashti according to law, because she has not done the bidding of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains?
- Esther 1:16 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֽוֹשׁ n Proper Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen has not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the peoples who are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus.
- Esther 1:17 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֡וֹשׁ n Proper For this deed of the queen will come abroad to all women, to make their husbands contemptible in their eyes, when it shall be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she didn't come.
- Esther 1:19 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper If it please the king, let there go forth a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it not be altered, that Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate to another who is better than she.
- Esther 2:1 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ n Proper After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was pacified, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her.
- Esther 2:12 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֗וֹשׁ n Proper Now when the turn of every maiden was come to go in to king Ahasuerus, after it had been done to her as prescribed for the women twelve months (for so were the days of their purification accomplished, [to wit], six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with sweet odors and with the things for the purifying of the women),
- Esther 2:16 אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ֙ n Proper So Esther was taken to king Ahasuerus into his house royal in the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.
- Esther 2:21 אֲחַשְׁוֵֽרֹשׁ n Proper In those days, while Mordecai was sitting in the king's gate, two of the king's chamberlains, Bigthan and Teresh, of those who kept the threshold, were angry, and sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus.
- Esther 3:1 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֜וֹשׁ n Proper After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes who were with him.
- Esther 3:6 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֖וֹשׁ n Proper But he scorned the thought of laying hands on Mordecai alone; for they had made known to him the people of Mordecai: therefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai.
- Esther 3:7 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ n Proper In the first month, which is the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of king Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day, and from month to month, [to] the twelfth [month], which is the month Adar.
- Esther 3:8 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper Haman said to king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; and their laws are diverse from [those of] every people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to allow them.
- Esther 3:12 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹשׁ֙ n Proper Then were the king's scribes called in the first month, on the thirteenth day of it; and there was written according to all that Haman commanded to the king's satraps, and to the governors who were over every province, and to the princes of every people, to every province according to the writing of it, and to every people after their language; in the name of king Ahasuerus was it written, and it was sealed with the king's ring.
- Esther 6:2 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֽוֹשׁ n Proper It was found written that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, of those who kept the threshold, who had sought to lay hands on the king Ahasuerus.
- Esther 7:5 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper Then spoke the king Ahasuerus and said to Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that dared presume in his heart to do so?
- Esther 8:1 אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ֙ n Proper On that day did the king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman the Jews' enemy to Esther the queen. Mordecai came before the king; for Esther had told what he was to her.
- Esther 8:7 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹשׁ֙ n Proper Then the king Ahasuerus said to Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, See, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have hanged on the gallows, because he laid his hand on the Jews.
- Esther 8:10 אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹ֔שׁ n Proper He wrote the name of king Ahasuerus, and sealed it with the king's ring, and sent letters by post on horseback, riding on swift steeds that were used in the king's service, bred of the stud:
- Esther 8:12 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ n Proper on one day in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, [namely], on the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar.
- Esther 9:2 אֳחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper the Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them was fallen on all the peoples.
- Esther 9:20 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both near and far,
- Esther 9:30 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ n Proper He sent letters to all the Jews, to the hundred twenty-seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, [with] words of peace and truth,
- Esther 10:1 אחשרש אֲחַשְׁוֵר֧וֹשׁ n Proper n Proper The king Ahasuerus laid a tribute on the land, and on the isles of the sea.
- Esther 10:3 אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ n Proper For Mordecai the Jew was next to king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brothers, seeking the good of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.
Daniel 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.
At its core, אחשורוש (ʼĂchashvêrôwsh) means “Ahasuerus.” Its uses cluster heavily in Esther (93% of all occurrences). Spanning 30 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Ezra 4:6. Dig into 30-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H325 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 →
- 30
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 30 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,086
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,086 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 30 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 30 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 30 verses · 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).
- King James Version: Ahasuerus 29×
- American Standard Version: Ahasuerus 30×
- Berean Standard Bible: Xerxes 29×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ahasuerus 31×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H325 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H325 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H325 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H325 across 32 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 2 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.
- Ahasuerus = "I will be silent and poor"
- title of the king of Persia, probably Xerxes
Word origin
n.pr.m. Ahasuerus = Xerxes (Pers. Khshayârshâ = mighty + eye or man, vid. Spiegel l.c. 216; in Aramaic חשיארש, CISII. i. 122 [b.c. 481]) king of Pers. Ezr 4:6 Est 1:1(×2), 2, 9, 10 + 18 textual Est + Est 10:1 Qr (Kt אחשׁרשׁ); אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹשׁ Est 1:16; 2:21; 3:12; 8:7, 10; also Dn 9:1 where made father of ‘Darius the Mede,’ cf. Meinh.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: of Persian origin
Forms in the corpus
The 14 distinct written forms H325 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 1:15 | 7 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֑וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 1:1 | 5 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵרֽוֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 1:9 | 4 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֗וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 1:1 | 3 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֖וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Daniel 9:1 | 2 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹשׁ֙ | Noun, Proper | Esther 3:12 | 2 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ֙ | Noun, Proper | Esther 2:16 | 2 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵֽרֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 2:21 | 1 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֜וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 3:1 | 1 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֡וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 1:17 | 1 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵר֧וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 10:1 | 1 |
| אֲחַשְׁוֵרֹ֔שׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 8:10 | 1 |
| אֳחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ | Noun, Proper | Esther 9:2 | 1 |
| אחשרש | Noun, Proper | Esther 10:1 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Ahasuerus). 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
There are three kings designated by this name in Scripture. (1.) The father of Darius the Mede, mentioned in Dan. 9:1. This was probably the Cyaxares I. known by this name in profane history, the king of Media and the conqueror of Nineveh.
(2.) The king mentioned in Ezra 4:6, probably the Cambyses of profane history, the son and successor of Cyrus (B.C. 529).
(3.) The son of Darius Hystaspes, the king named in the Book of Esther. He ruled over the kingdoms of Persia, Media, and Babylonia, "from India to Ethiopia." This was in all probability the Xerxes of profane history, who succeeded his father Darius (B.C. 485). In the LXX. version of the Book of Esther the name Artaxerxes occurs for Ahasuerus. He reigned for twenty-one years (B.C. 486-465). He invaded Greece with an army, it is said, of more than 2,000,000 soldiers, only 5,000 of whom returned with him. Leonidas, with his famous 300, arrested his progress at the Pass of Thermopylae, and then he was defeated disastrously by Themistocles at Salamis. It was after his return from this invasion that Esther was chosen as his queen.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(lion-king), the name of one Median and two Persian kings mentioned in the Old Testament.
+ In (Daniel 9:1) Ahasuerus is said to be the father of Darius the Mede. [Darius] This first Ahasuerus is Cyaxares, the conqueror of Nineveh. (Began to reign B.C. 634.) + The Ahasuerus king of Persia, referred to in (Ezra 4:6) must be Cambyses, thought to be Cyrus' successor, and perhaps his son. (B.C. 529.) + The third is the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther. This Ahasuerus is probably Xerxes of history, (Esther 1:1) (B.C. 485), and this conclusion is fortified by the resemblance of character and by certain chronological indications, the account of his life and character agreeing with the book of Esther In the third year of Ahaseuerus was held a great feast and assembly in Shushan the palace, (Esther 1:3) following a council held to consider the invasion of Greece. He divorced his queen Vashti for refusing to appear in public at this banquet, and married, four years afterwards, the Jewess Esther, cousin and ward of Mordecai. Five years after this, Haman, one of his counsellors, having been slighted by Mordecai, prevailed upon the king to order the destruction of all the Jews in the empire. But before the day appointed for the massacre, Esther and Mordecai influenced the king to put Haman to death and to give the Jews the right of self-Defence.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
prince; head; chief
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 29 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 30 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.
