כְּלִמָּה
shame
also: disgrace, reproach, confusion, dishonour 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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H3639 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 4 distinct verses. 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.
Isaiah
- Isaiah 30:3 לִ/כְלִמָּֽה prep + n c fs Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the refuge in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.
- Isaiah 45:16 בַ/כְּלִמָּ֔ה prep det + n c fs They shall be disappointed, yes, confounded, all of them; they shall go into confusion together who are makers of idols.
- Isaiah 50:6 מִ/כְּלִמּ֖וֹת prep + n c fp I gave my back to the strikers, and my cheeks to those who plucked off the hair; I didn't hide my face from shame and spitting.
- Isaiah 61:7 וּ/כְלִמָּ֖ה conj + n c fs Instead of your shame [you shall have] double; and instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess double; everlasting joy shall be to them.
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.
כלמה (kᵉlimmâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “shame.” The King James Version usually renders it “shame,” while modern versions prefer “disgrace” (Berean Standard Bible) and “humiliation” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 29 verses in 7 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Ezekiel dominates its distribution — 12 of 29 verses. Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “disgrace”, “reproach”, and “confusion”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3639 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 →
- 29
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 29 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,139
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,139 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 29 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 29 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 20 verses · 69%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 9 verses · 31%
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: Shame 17×, Confusion 6×, Dishonour 3×
- American Standard Version: Shame 11×, Dishonor 4×, Confusion 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Disgrace 17×, Shame 3×, Reproach 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Humiliation 6×, Disgrace 4×, Own shame 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3639 across 30 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 H3639 across 28 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H3639 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H3639 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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
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.
- 1. specif., insult, reproach, לֹא יִסַּג כ׳ Mi 2:6 reproaches do not cease; מוּסַר כְּלִמָּתִי Jb 20:3 = my beshaming (insulting) correction, i.e. the correction which insults me. e.g. Micah 2:6
- 2. in gen., reproach, ignominy, opp. כָּבוֹד ψ 4:3; הלך בַּכּ׳ Is 45:16 go into ignominy (+ בּוֹשׁ, נִכְלַם); often ‖ בֹּשֶׁת Is 30:3; 61:7 ψ 44:16, subj. of כִּסָּה Je 3:25 our ignominy covereth us, so under fig. of garment, after לָבַשׁ ψ 35:26 (+ בושׁ, חפר in v a), 109:29; ‖ חֶרְפָּה ψ 69:8 (subj. of כִּסְּתָה פָּנָ֑י), Je 51:51 (id.; בושׁ in ‖ cl.), ψ 71:13 (+ בושׁ in ‖ cl.); ‖ בֹּשֶׁת + חֶרְפָּה 69:20; ‖ אִוֶּלֶת Pr 18:13; ‖ רֹק Is 50:6; כ׳ עוֹלָם Je 20:11 (בושׁ in ‖ cl.); כְּלִמָּתֵךְ Ez 16:63 (id. ‖); often in Ezek. נשׂא כ׳ bear ignominy, Ez 16:52(×2), (‖ בושׁ), v 54 (נִכְלַם in ‖ cl.); 32:24, 25, 30 (all + אֶת־יוֹרְדֵי בוֹר with those who go down to the pit; ref. to ignominious death), 36:7; 39:26 (si vera l. = bear the humiliating sense of undeserved kindness from י׳; but txt. dub., Hi Co, q.v., [כ׳] נשׁו; Sm Da defend); נשׂא כְּלִמַּת הַגּוֹיִם, i.e. caused by the nations, 34:29; 36:6, also v 15 (‖ חֶרְפַּת עַמִּים), prob. also ψ 89:51 (read כְּלִמַּת, cf. VB Che Bae); וְנ׳ כְּלִמָּתָם וְתוֹעֲבוֹתָם אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ Ez 44:13. e.g. Psalms 4:3
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
n.f. insult, reproach, ignominy;—abs. כ׳ Is 45:16 + 9 times cstr. כְּלִמַּת Je 20:11 + 3 times; sf. כְּלִמָּתִי Jb 20:3 + 3 times, etc.; pl. כְּלִמּוֹת Mi 2:6; Is 50:6;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from כלם (kâlam) (H3637) — to shame.
Forms in the corpus
The 23 distinct written forms H3639 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3639, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 24 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 29 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.
