יָצַת
to kindle
also: burn, set on fire 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”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 14 distinct
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 7 times (23%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 4 times (13%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 3 times (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 3 times (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 3 times (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (3%)
+6 more forms (6 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 31 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H3341 appears — 28 distinct verses across 10 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.
Joshua 2 verses
- Joshua 8:8 תַּצִּ֤יתוּ Hiphil impf 2mp It shall be, when you have seized on the city, that you shall set the city on fire; according to the word of Yahweh shall you do: behold, I have commanded you.
- Joshua 8:19 וַ/יַּצִּ֥יתוּ conj + Hiphil wimpf 3mp The ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and entered into the city, and took it; and they hurried and set the city on fire.
Judges 1 verse
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 14:30 ו/הוצתי/ה וְ/הַצִּית֣וּ/הָ וַ/יַּצִּ֜תוּ conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs + sfx pers 3fs conj + Hiphil impv 2mp + sfx pers 3fs conj + Hiphil wimpf 3mp Therefore he said to his servants, Behold, Joab's field is near mine, and he has barley there; go and set it on fire. Absalom's servants set the field on fire.
- 2 Samuel 14:31 הִצִּ֧יתוּ Hiphil pf 3cp Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
2 Kings 2 verses
- 2 Kings 22:13 נִצְּתָ֣ה Niphal pf 3fs Go you, inquire of Yahweh for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found; for great is the wrath of Yahweh that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that which is written concerning us.
- 2 Kings 22:17 וְ/נִצְּתָ֧ה conj + Niphal wpf 3fs Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and it shall not be quenched.
Nehemiah 2 verses
- Nehemiah 1:3 נִצְּת֥וּ Niphal pf 3cp They said to me, The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates of it are burned with fire.
- Nehemiah 2:17 נִצְּת֣וּ Niphal pf 3cp Then said I to them, You see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste, and the gates of it are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 9:18 וַ/תִּצַּת֙ conj + Qal wimpf 3fs For wickedness burns as the fire; it devours the briers and thorns; yes, it kindles in the thickets of the forest, and they roll upward in a column of smoke.
- Isaiah 33:12 יִצַּֽתּוּ Qal impf 3mp The peoples shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.
Jeremiah 14 verses
- Jeremiah 2:15 נצתה נִצְּת֖וּ Niphal pf 3fs Niphal pf 3cp The young lions have roared on him, and yelled; and they have made his land waste: his cities are burned up, without inhabitant.
- Jeremiah 9:10 נִצְּתוּ֙ Niphal pf 3cp For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none passes through; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the birds of the sky and the animals are fled, they are gone.
- Jeremiah 9:12 נִצְּתָ֥ה Niphal pf 3fs Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and [who is] he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? why is the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passes through?
- Jeremiah 11:16 הִצִּ֥ית Hiphil pf 3ms Yahweh called your name, A green olive tree, beautiful with goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he has kindled fire on it, and the branches of it are broken.
- Jeremiah 17:27 וְ/הִצַּ֧תִּי conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs But if you will not listen to me to make the Sabbath day holy, and not to bear a burden and enter in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates of it, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.
- Jeremiah 21:14 וְ/הִצַּ֤תִּי conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, says Yahweh; and I will kindle a fire in her forest, and it shall devour all that is round about her.
- Jeremiah 32:29 וְ/הִצִּ֜יתוּ conj + Hiphil pf 3cp and the Chaldeans, who fight against this city, shall come and set this city on fire, and burn it, with the houses, on whose roofs they have offered incense to Baal, and poured out drink-offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.
- Jeremiah 43:12 וְ/הִצַּ֣תִּי conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt; and he shall burn them, and carry them away captive: and he shall array himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd puts on his garment; and he shall go forth from there in peace.
- Jeremiah 46:19 וְ/נִצְּתָ֖ה conj + Niphal wpf 3fs You daughter who dwell in Egypt, furnish yourself to go into captivity; for Memphis shall become a desolation, and shall be burnt up, without inhabitant.
- Jeremiah 49:2 תִּצַּ֑תְנָה Qal impf 3fp Therefore, behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard against Rabbah of the children of Ammon; and it shall become a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire: then shall Israel possess those who did possess him, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 49:27 וְ/הִצַּ֥תִּי conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall devour the palaces of Ben Hadad.
- Jeremiah 50:32 וְ/הִצַּ֤תִּי conj + Hiphil wpf 1cs The proud one shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up; and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all who are round about him.
- Jeremiah 51:30 הִצִּ֥יתוּ Hiphil pf 3cp The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they remain in their strongholds; their might has failed; they are become as women: her dwelling-places are set on fire; her bars are broken.
- Jeremiah 51:58 יִצַּ֑תּוּ Qal impf 3mp Thus says Yahweh of hosts: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly overthrown, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the peoples shall labor for vanity, and the nations for the fire; and they shall be weary.
Lamentations 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Amos 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.
יצת (yâtsath) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to kindle.” Jeremiah dominates its distribution — 14 of 28 verses. Spanning 28 verses in 10 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Joshua 8:8. The lexical range runs to 3 senses — “to kindle” plus “burn” and “set on fire”. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3341 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 →
- 28
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 28 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,120
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,120 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 28 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 28 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 25 verses · 89%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 11%
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: Set 6×, I will kindle 5×, Shall be burned 2×
- American Standard Version: I will kindle 5×, Set 3×, Are burned 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: I will kindle 5×, Fire 4×, Set 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Burned 2×, Have been burned 2×, I will kindle 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3341 across 29 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 H3341 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H3341 across 26 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3341 across 24 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.
Senses in BDB
The 3 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.
- to kindle, burn, set on fire
- (Qal) to kindle
(Niphal)
- (Hiphil) to set on fire, kindle
Word origin
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.
יָצַת
- [to break through, spread,] to kindle.
- to kindle, cause to spread. Yoma VI, 7 (67ᵇ) משיַצִּית האור ברובן ed. from the time that he (the officiating priest) causes the fire to spread over the major portion of them; [Ms. M. משתַּצִּית את האור from the time that thou (whoever it may be) causest &c.; Ms. M. 2 משתִּיצַּת האור (Kal, אור fem.) that the fire seizes &c.; Y. ed. משיִצַּת; Ms. L. משיוּצַת (Hof.) when fire has been set; v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note]. Ib. 68ᵇ המַצִּית את האור he who kindles (stirs) the fire, contrad. to השורף who attends to the burning of the pieces. Men. 26ᵇ משתצית בו את האור (Ms. M. משיצית האור, Ms. R. 1 משתיצת); Sot. 15ᵃ משתיצת האור. Men. l. c. bot. לא משכחת לה שתצית האור וכ׳ (Ms. R. 1 שתיצת; Ms. M. שיצית, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) it is impossible that the fire should have seized the major portion of it (at sunset). Tam. II, 4 שהיו מַצִּיתִין וכ׳ where they set the kindling wood on fire, v. אֲלִיתָא. Ab. Zar. 38ᵃ, v. אַגָּם. Y. B. Kam. II, 3ᵃ במַצִּית את האור וכ׳ setting fire to each ear of corn separately. Bab. B. Kam. 22ᵇ בשה׳ בגופו וכ׳ when he set fire to the body of the slave; a. fr.
- to be set to, to be made to spread. Yoma l. c., v. supra.—Part. מוּצַת. B. Mets. 59ᵃ (ref. to Gen. XXXVIII, 25) א"ת מוצאת אלא מוּצַת Ar. s. v. א"ת (= מוצתת, missing in ed. a. Mss.; cmp. Gen. R. s. 85 a. ‘Rashi’ a. l. מוצת קרי) read not, ‘she was carried out’, but ‘she was about to be burnt’. Num. R. s. 12 (expl. זהב מופז, I Kings X, 18) דומה לגפרית מוּצֶתֶת באש it looks like sulphur when fire is set to it; Cant. R. to III, 10 מוצצת (corr. acc.). e.g. Genesis 38:25
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 29 distinct written forms H3341 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 20 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 28 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
- Joshua 8:8
- Judges 9:49
- 2 Samuel 14:30
- 2 Kings 22:13
- Isaiah 9:18
- Jeremiah 2:15
- Lamentations 4:11
- Amos 1:14
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.
