יִשַׁי
Jesse
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Jesse’ 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 H3448 appears — 39 distinct verses across 8 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.
Ruth 2 verses
- Ruth 4:17 יִשַׁ֖י n Proper The women her neighbors gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they named him Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
- Ruth 4:22 יִשָׁ֔י וְ/יִשַׁ֖י n Proper conj + n Proper and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
1 Samuel 24 verses
- 1 Samuel 16:1 יִשַׁ֣י n Proper Yahweh said to Samuel, How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel? fill your horn with oil, and go: I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite; for I have provided me a king among his sons.
- 1 Samuel 16:3 לְ/יִשַׁ֖י prep + n Proper Call Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do: and you shall anoint to me him whom I name to you.
- 1 Samuel 16:5 יִשַׁי֙ n Proper He said, Peaceably; I am come to sacrifice to Yahweh: sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice. He sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice.
- 1 Samuel 16:8 יִשַׁי֙ n Proper Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, Neither has Yahweh chosen this.
- 1 Samuel 16:9 יִשַׁ֖י n Proper Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by. He said, Neither has Yahweh chosen this.
- 1 Samuel 16:10 יִשַׁ֛י יִשַׁ֔י n Proper n Proper Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel. Samuel said to Jesse, Yahweh has not chosen these.
- 1 Samuel 16:11 יִשַׁי֮ יִשַׁי֙ n Proper n Proper Samuel said to Jesse, Are here all your children? He said, There remains yet the youngest, and, behold, he is keeping the sheep. Samuel said to Jesse, Send and get him; for we will not sit down until he come here.
- 1 Samuel 16:18 לְ/יִשַׁי֮ prep + n Proper Then answered one of the young men, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, and a mighty man of valor, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, and a comely person; and Yahweh is with him.
- 1 Samuel 16:19 יִשָׁ֑י n Proper Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, Send me David your son, who is with the sheep.
- 1 Samuel 16:20 יִשַׁ֜י n Proper Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son to Saul.
- 1 Samuel 16:22 יִשַׁ֖י n Proper Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Please let David stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight.
- 1 Samuel 17:12 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons: and the man was an old man in the days of Saul, stricken [in years] among men.
- 1 Samuel 17:13 יִשַׁי֙ n Proper The three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
- 1 Samuel 17:17 יִשַׁ֜י n Proper Jesse said to David his son, Take now for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry [them] quickly to the camp to your brothers;
- 1 Samuel 17:20 יִשָׁ֑י n Proper David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the place of the wagons, as the host which was going forth to the fight shouted for the battle.
- 1 Samuel 17:58 יִשַׁ֖י n Proper Saul said to him, Whose son are you, you young man? David answered, I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.
- 1 Samuel 20:27 יִשַׁ֛י n Proper It happened on the next day after the new moon, [which was] the second [day], that David's place was empty: and Saul said to Jonathan his son, Why doesn't the son of Jesse come to meat, neither yesterday, nor today?
- 1 Samuel 20:30 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, You son of a perverse rebellious woman, don't I know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?
- 1 Samuel 20:31 יִשַׁי֙ n Proper For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom. Therefore now send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.
- 1 Samuel 22:7 יִשַׁי֙ n Proper Saul said to his servants who stood about him, Hear now, you Benjamites; will the son of Jesse give everyone of you fields and vineyards, will he make you all captains of thousands and captains of hundreds,
- 1 Samuel 22:8 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none who discloses to me when my son makes a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you who is sorry for me, or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?
- 1 Samuel 22:9 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper Then answered Doeg the Edomite, who stood by the servants of Saul, and said, I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech the son of Ahitub.
- 1 Samuel 22:13 יִשָׁ֑י n Proper Saul said to him, Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread, and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?
- 1 Samuel 25:10 יִשָׁ֑י n Proper Nabal answered David's servants, and said, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? there are many servants now-a-days who break away every man from his master.
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 20:1 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper There happened to be there a base fellow, whose name was Sheba, the son of Bichri, a Benjamite: and he blew the trumpet, and said, We have no portion in David, neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to his tents, Israel.
- 2 Samuel 23:1 יִשַׁ֗י n Proper Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse says, The man who was raised on high says, The anointed of the God of Jacob, The sweet psalmist of Israel:
1 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 5 verses
- 1 Chronicles 2:12 יִשָֽׁי n Proper and Boaz became the father of Obed, and Obed became the father of Jesse;
- 1 Chronicles 2:13 וְ/אִישַׁ֛י conj + n Proper and Jesse became the father of his firstborn Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimea the third,
- 1 Chronicles 10:14 יִשָֽׁי n Proper and didn't inquire of Yahweh: therefore he killed him, and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse.
- 1 Chronicles 12:18 יִשַׁ֔י n Proper Then the Spirit came on Amasai, who was chief of the thirty, [and he said], "We are yours, David, and on your side, you son of Jesse: peace, peace be to you, and peace be to your helpers; for your God helps you." Then David received them, and made them captains of the band.
- 1 Chronicles 29:26 יִשָׁ֔י n Proper Now David the son of Jesse reigned over all Israel.
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 10:16 יִשַׁ֗י n Proper When all Israel saw that the king didn't listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of Jesse: every man to your tents, Israel: now see to your own house, David. So all Israel departed to their tents.
- 2 Chronicles 11:18 יִשָֽׁי n Proper Rehoboam took him a wife, Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David, [and of] Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse;
Psalms 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 11:1 יִשָׁ֑י n Proper There shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit.
- Isaiah 11:10 יִשַׁ֗י n Proper It shall happen in that day, that the root of Jesse, who stands for an ensign of the peoples, to him shall the nations seek; and his resting-place shall be glorious.
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.
ישי — transliterated Yishay — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Jesse.” Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Samuel (62% of all occurrences). With 39 verses in 8 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Ruth 4:17. See 39-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3448 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #864
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 864 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 39 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 24 verses 62%
- 1 Chronicles 5 verses 13%
- Ruth 2 verses 5%
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 39 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 29 verses · 74%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 26%
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: Jesse 39×
- American Standard Version: Jesse 38×
- Berean Standard Bible: Jesse 35×, Him 2×, Jesse’s 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Jesse 41×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3448 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H3448 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H3448 across 41 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3448 across 42 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.
- Jesse = "I possess"
- son of Boaz and the father of king David
Word origin
n.pr.m. father of David (etym. dub.; Ol§ 277 f. conj. יֵשׁ יָהּ; We 1 S 14:49 ישׁי = אישׁי = אבישׁי (but see this))—יִשַׁי 1 S 16:3 + 29 times; יִשָׁ֑י v 19 + 10 times; 𝔊 Ιεσσαι; (וְ)אִישַׁי 1 Ch 2:13;—+ יִשַׁי בֵּית־הַלַּחְמִי Jesse the Bethlehemite 1 S 16:1, 18 (בֶּן־ישׁי וגו׳, of David), 17:58†; ישׁי also 16:3 + 14 times 1 S 16, 17; †son of עוֹבֵד according to Ru 4:17, 22(×2) = 1 Ch 2:12; דָּוִ(י)ד בֶּן־ישׁי 2 S 23:1; 1 Ch 10:14; 29:26 ψ 72:20; אֱלִיאָב בֶּן־ישׁי 2 Ch 11:18; elsewhere בֶּן־ישׁי alone = David, 1 S 20:27, 30, 31; 22:7, 8, 9, 13; 25:10; 2 S 20:1; 1 K 12:16 = 2 Ch 10:16, 1 Ch 12:18; גֶּזַע יִשָׁ֑י Is 11:1; שֹׁרֶשׁ יִשַׁי v 10 of Jesse as ancestor of future (Messianic) king†.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from יש (yêsh) (H3426) — there is.
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.
יִשַׁי
- (b. h.) pr. n. m. Jesse, father of king David. Ber. 58ᵃ. Pes. 119ᵃ; a. fr.
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 15 distinct written forms H3448 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִשַׁ֔י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 12:18 | 7 |
| יִשַׁי֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:5 | 6 |
| יִשָׁ֑י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:19 | 5 |
| יִשַׁ֖י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:9 | 4 |
| יִשַׁ֗י | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 12:16 | 4 |
| יִשָֽׁי | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:12 | 4 |
| יִשַׁ֛י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:10 | 2 |
| יִשַׁ֜י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:20 | 2 |
| יִשָׁ֔י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 29:26 | 2 |
| וְ/אִישַׁ֛י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:13 | 1 |
| וְ/יִשַׁ֖י | Noun, Proper | Ruth 4:22 | 1 |
| יִשַׁ֣י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:1 | 1 |
| יִשַׁי֮ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:11 | 1 |
| לְ/יִשַׁ֖י | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:3 | 1 |
| לְ/יִשַׁי֮ | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 16:18 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3448, 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.
Derives from
Shares the same root
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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Jesse). 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
Firm, or a gift, a son of Obed, the son of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4:17, 22; Matt. 1:5, 6; Luke 3:32). He was the father of eight sons, the youngest of whom was David (1 Sam. 17:12). The phrase "stem of Jesse" is used for the family of David (Isa. 11:1), and "root of Jesse" for the Messiah (Isa. 11:10; Rev. 5:5). Jesse was a man apparently of wealth and position at Bethlehem (1 Sam. 17:17, 18, 20; Ps. 78:71). The last reference to him is of David's procuring for him an asylum with the king of Moab (1 Sam. 22:3).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(wealthy), the father of David, was the son of Obed, who again was the fruit of the union of Boaz and the Moabitess Ruth. His great-grandmother was Rahab the Canaanite, of Jericho. (Matthew 1:5) Jesse's genealogy is twice given in full in the Old Testament, viz., (Ruth 4:18-22) and 1Chr 2:5-12 He is commonly designated as "Jesse the Bethlehemite," (1 Samuel 16:1,18; 17:58) but his full title is "the Ephrathite of Bethlehem Judah." ch. (1 Samuel 17:12) He is an "old man" when we first meet with him, (1 Samuel 17:12) with eight sons, ch. (1 Samuel 16:10; 17:12) residing at Bethlehem. ch (1 Samuel 16:4,5) Jesse's wealth seems to have consisted of a flock of sheep and goats, which were under the care of David. ch. (1 Samuel 16:11; 17:34,35) After David's rupture with Saul he took his father and his mother into the country of Moab and deposited them with the king, and there they disappear from our view in the records of Scripture. (B.C. 1068-61.) Who the wife of Jesse was we are not told.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
gift; oblation; one who is
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 38 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 39 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
- Ruth 4:17
- 1 Samuel 16:1
- 2 Samuel 20:1
- 1 Kings 12:16
- 1 Chronicles 2:12
- 2 Chronicles 10:16
- Psalms 72:20
- Isaiah 11:1
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.
