כָּבָה
to quench
also: put out, be put out, be quenched, be extinguished fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘be quenched’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 9 distinct
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 11 times (46%)
- Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 4 times (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (8%)
- Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct 2 times (8%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (4%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (4%)
+1 more form (1 occurrence)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 24 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H3518 appears — 24 distinct verses across 11 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.
Leviticus 2 verses
- Leviticus 6:12 תִכְבֶּ֔ה Qal impf 3fs The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it, it shall not go out; and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning: and he shall lay the burnt offering in order upon it, and shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings.
- Leviticus 6:13 תִכְבֶֽה Qal impf 3fs Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out.
1 Samuel 1 verse
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 14:7 וְ/כִבּ֗וּ conj + Piel wpf 3cp Behold, the whole family is risen against your handmaid, and they say, Deliver him who struck his brother, that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he killed, and so destroy the heir also. Thus will they quench my coal which is left, and will leave to my husband neither name nor remainder on the surface of the earth.
- 2 Samuel 21:17 תְכַבֶּ֖ה Piel impf 2ms But Abishai the son of Zeruiah helped him, and struck the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David swore to him, saying, You shall go no more out with us to battle, that you don't quench the lamp of Israel.
2 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 29:7 וַ/יְכַבּוּ֙ conj + Piel wimpf 3mp Also they have shut up the doors of the porch, and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.
- 2 Chronicles 34:25 תִכְבֶּֽה Qal impf 3fs Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense to other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore is my wrath poured out on this place, and it shall not be quenched.
Proverbs 2 verses
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Isaiah 5 verses
- Isaiah 1:31 מְכַבֶּֽה Piel ptcp.act ms The strong will be like tinder, And his work like a spark. They will both burn together, And no one will quench them."
- Isaiah 34:10 תִכְבֶּ֔ה Qal impf 3fs It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke of it shall go up for ever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever and ever.
- Isaiah 42:3 יְכַבֶּ֑/נָּה Piel impf 3ms + sfx pers 3fs A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench: he will bring forth justice in truth.
- Isaiah 43:17 כָבֽוּ Qal pf 3cp who brings forth the chariot and horse, the army and the mighty man (they lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinct, they are quenched as a wick):
- Isaiah 66:24 תִכְבֶּ֔ה Qal impf 3fs They shall go forth, and look on the dead bodies of the men who have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh.
Jeremiah 4 verses
- Jeremiah 4:4 מְכַבֶּ֔ה Piel ptcp.act ms Circumcise yourselves to Yahweh, and take away the foreskins of your heart, you men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn so that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.
- Jeremiah 7:20 תִכְבֶּֽה Qal impf 3fs Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, my anger and my wrath shall be poured out on this place, on man, and on animal, and on the trees of the field, and on the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.
- Jeremiah 17:27 תִכְבֶּֽה Qal impf 3fs 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 21:12 מְכַבֶּ֔ה Piel ptcp.act ms House of David, thus says Yahweh, Execute justice in the morning, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn so that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.
Ezekiel 3 verses
- Ezekiel 20:47 תִכְבֶּה֙ Qal impf 3fs and tell the forest of the South, Hear the word of Yahweh: Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree in you, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burnt thereby.
- Ezekiel 20:48 תִּכְבֶּֽה Qal impf 3fs All flesh shall see that I, Yahweh, have kindled it; it shall not be quenched.
- Ezekiel 32:7 בְ/כַבּֽוֹתְ/ךָ֙ prep + Piel inf.cs + sfx pers 2ms When I shall extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and make the stars of it dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light.
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.
“to quench” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb כבה (kâbâh). Older and newer Bibles part ways — “shall not be quenched” in the King James Version, “be quenched” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 24 verses across 11 books, an uncommon footprint. Its earliest occurrence is Leviticus 6:12. The verb spans 2 stems, from Qal to Piel. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3518 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 →
- 24
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 24 distinct verses.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,327
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,327 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 24 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 24 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 17 verses · 71%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 21%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 8%
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: Shall not be quenched 7×, None can quench 2×
- American Standard Version: Shall not be quenched 6×, None can quench 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Be quenched 6×, Be extinguished 4×, Extinguish it 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Be quenched 5×, Will 5×, Go out 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3518 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 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 H3518 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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 H3518 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H3518 across 37 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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.
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 2 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.
Qal
- be quenched, extinguished
Piel
- . quench, extinguish
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
[ כָּבָה ] vb. be quenched, extinguished, go out, of fire or lamp
— 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.
כָּבָה
- , v. כבי
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 18 distinct written forms H3518 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 22 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 24 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
- Leviticus 6:12
- 1 Samuel 3:3
- 2 Samuel 14:7
- 2 Kings 22:17
- 2 Chronicles 29:7
- Proverbs 26:20
- Song of Solomon 8:7
- Isaiah 1:31
- Jeremiah 4:4
- Ezekiel 32:7
- Amos 5:6
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.
