אָיַב
to be hostile
‘to be hostile’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Stem
- 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).
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H340 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.
Exodus 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, איב (ʼâyab) means “to be hostile.” A scarce word — 1 verse in all of the Hebrew Bible. The word gravitates to Exodus (100%). Its lone occurrence is Exodus 23:22. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. Dig into 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H340 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
- Exodus 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).
- King James Version: I will be an enemy 1×
- American Standard Version: I will be an enemy 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Enemies 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: I will be an enemy 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H340 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H340 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H340 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H340 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 1 sense 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.
Qal
- Pf. †וְאָיַבְתִּ֫י Ex 23:22; Pt. אוֹיֵב (אֹיֵב) Ex 15:6 +; sf. (אוֹיְבִי) אֹיְבִי 2 S 22:18 = ψ 18:18 +; f. sf. אֹיַבְתִּי Mi 7:8, 10; אֹיִבְךָ Ex 23:4 +, etc.; pl. אוֹיְבִים ψ 68:24; 127:5; אֹיְבִים ψ 139:22, etc.;—be hostile to, treat as enemy Ex 23:22 (E, Cov’t code) וְאָיַבְתִּ֫י אֶת־אֹיְבֶיךָ וְצַרְתִּ֫י אֶת־צֹרְרֶיךָ (subj. י׳); elsewhere Pt. 1 S 18:29 וַיְהִי שָׁאוּל אֹיֵב אֶת־דָּוִד; usually as subst. & mostly sf.; enemy, of personal foe Ex 23:4 (E ‖ שֹׂנֵא v 5) Nu 35:23 (P) 1 S 19:17 (cf. 18:29) 24:5, 20 2 S 4:8 1 K 21:20 Jb 27:7 ψ 54:9; 55:13 (‖ מְשַׂנֵּא; opp. אַלּוּף, מְיֻדָּע v 14) Mi 2:8 Pr 16:7; 24:17 +; in sim. Je 30:14 (מַכַּת אוֹיֵב); of public national enemy, sg. Ju 16:23, 24; coll. Ex 15:6, 9 Dt 33:27 Na 3:11 2 Ch 6:24 +; personif. Mi 7:8, 10; more oft. pl. Ex 23:22 (E) Lv 26:7f (H) Nu 10:9 (P) Dt 1:42; 6:19 Je 15:9; 34:20, 21 +; of enemies of God, as protector of his people Nu 10:35 (J) Ju 5:31 1 S 30:26 2 S 18:19 ψ 66:3; 68:1, 22 Na 1:2, 8 Is 66:6 +; as morally supreme Jb 13:24; 33:10 ψ 37:20; 92:10(×2) +; of God as enemy of rebellious people Is 63:10, in sim. La 2:4, 5. e.g. Exodus 23:22
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
vb. be hostile to (Ass. aibu (v. DlW), enemy = אֹיֵב)—
— 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.
אֵיב
- v. אֵב
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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H340, 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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
