כָּלֵב
Caleb
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Caleb’ 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 H3612 appears in the Book of 1 Samuel — 1 distinct verse. 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.
1 Samuel
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.
“Caleb” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name כלב (Kâlêb). Scripture first uses it in Numbers 13:6. With 35 verses in 6 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Numbers, which alone accounts for 26% of its uses. See 35-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3612 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 →
- 35
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 35 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,023
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,023 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 35 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 9 verses 26%
- Joshua 9 verses 26%
- 1 Chronicles 9 verses 26%
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 35 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 16 verses · 46%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 10 verses · 29%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 9 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: Caleb 27×, Caleb's 4×, Save caleb 2×
- American Standard Version: Caleb 30×
- Berean Standard Bible: Caleb 29×, Caleb’s 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Caleb 35×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3612 across 35 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 H3612 across 35 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H3612 across 35 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3612 across 35 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- Caleb = "dog"
- the godly son of Jephunneh and the faithful spy who reported the Promised Land favourably and urged its capture
- son of Hezron and grandson of Pharez and great grandson of Judah and the father of Hur and grandfather of Caleb the spy
Word origin
n.pr.m. (Nab. n.pr. כלבא Eut (Nö) p. 55. כלבו VogNab. 6; cf. also We Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten iii. 217; on כָּלֵב = dog-clan, v. RSK 17, 190 f., 219, 254);—son of יְפֻנֶּה (𝔊 Χαλεβ; cf. LagBN 78), called הַקְּנִזִּי (v. קְנַז) in JE, Nu 32:12; Jos 14:6, 14, cf. 15:17 = Ju 1:13, Ju 3:9 (where קְנַז is brother of כ׳), also 1 Ch 4:15; treated as full Judahite only in P Nu 13:6 (v. GFM Ju p. 30 f.) the one of the spies who (with Joshua) reported well of Canaan 14:6, 24, 30, 38; also 26:65; 34:19; Dt 1:36; Jos 14:13; 15:13, 14, 16, 18; 21:12 (P = 1 Ch 6:41) Ju 1:12, 14, 15, 20 (‖ with Jos 15); = clan of Caleb 1 S 30:14 (disting. from Judah). Caleb is called בֶּן־חֶצְרוֹן 1 Ch 2:18, cf. v 19, 42, 46, 48, 49, 50 = כְּלוּבָ֑י v 9; בְּכָלֵב אֶפְרָתָה 1 Ch 2:24, read perhaps בָּא כ׳, so 𝔊 𝔙, cf. KauAT (v. אֶפְרָתָה p. 68 supr.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from כלב (keleb) (H3611) — dog.
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.
כָּלַב
- (cmp. כָּלַל) to seize.—Denom. כֶּלֶב.
- (denom. of כֶּלֶב) [to make stitches resembling dog-bites (cmp. our ‘cat-stitching’),] to stitch, opp. to תָּפַר to sew in a workmanlike manner. M. Kat. I, 8 (8ᵇ) האומן מְכַלֵּב Ms. M. a. Y. ed. (Mish. a. Babli מַכְלִיב) the professional tailor is permitted (during the festive week) to stitch (but not to sew); expl. ib. 10ᵃ מפסיע he makes wide steps (cross-stitches); (another opin.) שיני כלבתא (Ms. M. only כַּלְבְּתָא q. v.) dog’s teeth, i.e. irregular stitches; Y. ib. 80ᵈ bot. מפסיע; (oth. opin.) אחת אחת each stitch singly. Ib. הרוצענין מְכַלְּבִין the saddlers are permitted to do dog-stitching.
כֶּלֶב
- preced.) dog. Snh. 63ᵇ (expl. נבחן, II Kings XVII, 31) כ׳ they worshipped a dog. Yoma VIII, 6, a. e. כ׳ שוטה a mad dog. Kil. I, 6, v. כּוּפְרִי. Kel. XVII, 13 כ׳ המים sea-dog. Gen. R. s. 77, v. אַגְרִיאוֹן. Y. Snh. VII, 23ᶜ top (ref. to Ps. XXII, 21) מכַּלְבּוֹ של וכ׳ from the dog (the vicious accuser) of that pious man, v. ib. 23ᵇ bot., sq.); a. fr. Pl. כְּלָבִים. Ber. 3ᵃ. Tosef. B. Kam. VIII, 17. Ex. R. s. 20 עשו … כ׳ של וכ׳ the Egyptians made golden dogs by sorcery that they should bark &c.; a. fr. e.g. 2 Kings 17:31
כְּלֵב
- Targ. Ps. LIX, 7. Targ. Prov. VII, 22 (Ms. כְּלֵיבָא; h. text עכס); a. fr.—Y. Ab. Zar. III, 42ᵈ top, expl. נבחן, v. preced.—Erub. 61ᵃ (prov.) כ׳ בלא מתיה וכ׳ a dog away from home barks not for seven years, i.e. however quarrelsome a man may be, he will not fight in a strange place; a. fr.—Trnsf. a mean person. Lev. R. s. 9.—Pl. כַּלְבִּין, כַּלְבַּיָּא, כַּלְבֵּי. Targ. Ps. XXII, 17. Targ. Is. LVI, 10; a. e.—Y. Peah I, 15ᶜ bot.; Y. Kidd. I, 61ᵇ, v. דּוּשׁ ch.—Sabb. 152ᵃ כַּלְבּוֹהִי לא וכ׳ his (euphem. for my) dogs no longer bark, i.e. my voice is weak from old age. B. Mets. 94ᵃ top כך וכך כ׳ איכא וכ׳ so and so many dogs have we with us. Pesik. B’shall., p. 86ᵃ תרין כלבי דחרשין (not כלבא) two dogs (of gold) made by the sorcerers (v. preced.). Ib., sq. כ׳ דקושטא the real (natural) dogs do not bark at us (ref. to Ex. XI, 7); a. e.—[Targ. Koh. IV, 6 כלב גזילא, some ed., read בלא ג׳.—Lam. R. to I, 4 כלבא, read: כַּלְבָּה.] e.g. Exodus 11:7
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 21 distinct written forms H3612 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| כָּלֵ֖ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:49 | 5 |
| כָּלֵ֔ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:46 | 4 |
| כָּלֵ֣ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:15 | 3 |
| לְ/כָלֵ֥ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 6:56 | 3 |
| כָלֵ֖ב | Noun, Proper | Judges 1:13 | 2 |
| כָלֵב֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:19 | 2 |
| כָּלֵ֤ב | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 1:36 | 2 |
| וְ/כָלֵ֖ב | Noun, Proper | Numbers 14:38 | 1 |
| וְ/כָלֵ֣ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:18 | 1 |
| וְ/כָלֵב֙ | Noun, Proper | Numbers 14:6 | 1 |
| וּ/לְ/כָלֵ֣ב | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:13 | 1 |
| כָלֵ֑ב | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:17 | 1 |
| כָלֵ֔ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:50 | 1 |
| כָלֵ֗ב | Noun, Proper | Numbers 14:24 | 1 |
| כָּלֵ֑ב | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 30:14 | 1 |
| כָּלֵ֗ב | Noun, Proper | Judges 1:15 | 1 |
| כָּלֵ֛ב | Noun, Proper | Numbers 13:30 | 1 |
| כָּלֵ֥ב | Noun, Proper | Joshua 14:6 | 1 |
| כָּלֵב֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:48 | 1 |
| לְ/כָלֵ֨ב | Noun, Proper | Joshua 14:14 | 1 |
| לְ/כָלֵב֙ | Noun, Proper | Judges 1:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3612, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Caleb). 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
A dog. (1.) One of the three sons of Hezron of the tribe of Judah. He is also called Chelubai (1 Chr. 2:9). His descendants are enumerated (18-20, 42-49).
(2.) A "son of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah" (1 Chr. 2:50). Some would read the whole passage thus: "These [i.e., the list in ver. 42-49] were the sons of Caleb. The sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, were Shobal, etc." Thus Hur would be the name of the son and not the father of Caleb (ver. 19).
(3.) The son of Jephunneh (Num. 13:6; 32:12; Josh. 14:6, 14). He was one of those whom Moses sent to search the land in the second year after the Exodus. He was one of the family chiefs of the tribe of Judah. He and Joshua the son of Nun were the only two of the whole number who encouraged the people to go up and possess the land, and they alone were spared when a plague broke out in which the other ten spies perished (Num. 13; 14). All the people that had been numbered, from twenty years old and upward, perished in the wilderness except these two. The last notice we have of Caleb is when (being then eighty-five years of age) he came to Joshua at the camp at Gilgal, after the people had gained possession of the land, and reminded him of the promise Moses had made to him, by virtue of which he claimed a certain portion of the land of Kirjath-arba as his inheritance (Josh. 14:6-15; 15:13-15; 21:10-12; 1 Sam. 25:2, 3; 30:14). He is called a "Kenezite" in Josh. 14:6, 14. This may simply mean "son of Kenez" (Num. 32:12). Some, however, read "Jephunneh, the son of Kenez," who was a descendant of Hezron, the son of Pharez, a grandson of Judah (1 Chr. 2:5). This Caleb may possibly be identical with (2).
(4.) Caleb gave his name apparently to a part of the south country (1 Sam. 30:14) of Judah, the district between Hebron and Carmel, which had been assigned to him. When he gave up the city of Hebron to the priests as a city of refuge, he retained possession of the surrounding country (Josh. 21:11, 12; comp. 1 Sam. 25:3).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(capable).
+ According to (1 Chronicles 2:9,18,19,42,50) the son of Hezron the son of Pharez the son of Judah, and the father of Hur, and consequently grandfather of Caleb the spy. (B.C. about 1600.) + Son of Jephunneh, one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to Canaan. (Numbers 13:6) (B.C. 1490.) He and Oshea or Joshua the son of Nun were the only two of the whole number who encouraged the people to enter in boldly to the land and take possession of it. Fortyfive years afterwards Caleb came to Joshua and claimed possession of the land of the Anakim, Kirjath-arba or Hebron, and the neighboring hill country. Josh 14. This was immediately granted to him, and the following chapter relates how he took possession of Hebron, driving out the three sons of Anak; and how he offered Achsah his daughter in marriage to whoever would take Kirjath-sepher, i.e. Debir; and how when Othniel, his younger brother, had performed the feat, he not only gave him his daughter to wife, but with her the upper and nether springs of water which she asked for. It is probable that Caleb was a foreigner by birth,--a proselyte, incorporated into the tribe of Judah.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
a dog; a crow; a basket
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 35 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 35 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.
