כְּמוֹ

‘like’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

H3644 Strong's Hebrew

kᵉmôw Transliteration

/kem-o'/ Pronunciation

Usage in the Hebrew Bible 142 appearances

Definition — BDB

like, as, the like of which (adverb) - when, according as, as it were (conjunction)

Cite this entry

Strong's H3644 — כמו (kᵉmôw), "like". Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906). Lemma, https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H3644.

Show BibTeX & RIS

BibTeX

@misc{lemma-H3644,
  author       = {Lemma},
  title        = {H3644 כמו (kᵉmôw) — like},
  howpublished = {\url{https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H3644}},
  note         = {Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906). Lemma interlinear Bible study tool}
}

RIS

TY  - GEN
AU  - Lemma
TI  - H3644 — כמו (kᵉmôw), "like"
PB  - Lemma
N1  - Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906)
UR  - https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H3644
ER  -

Compare with another word →

Grammar key — what these labels mean

Preposition: A relational word (e.g. “in,” “to,” “from”) governing a noun.

Grammatical forms

Preposition 141 times (99%)
Pronoun, Indefinite 1 time (1%)

Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 142 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.

Every verse where H3644 appears — 126 distinct verses across 27 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.

Genesis 5 verses

Exodus 11 verses

Leviticus 2 verses

Numbers 1 verse

Numbers 23:10 כָּמֹֽ/הוּ prep + sfx pers 3ms Who can count the dust of Jacob, Or number the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, Let my last end be like his!

Deuteronomy 7 verses

Judges 2 verses

1 Samuel 3 verses

2 Samuel 3 verses

1 Kings 5 verses

2 Kings 3 verses

1 Chronicles 1 verse

1 Chronicles 17:20 כָּמ֔וֹ/ךָ prep + sfx pers 2ms Yahweh, there is none like you, neither is there any God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

2 Chronicles 3 verses

Nehemiah 3 verses

Job 16 verses

Psalms 25 verses

Proverbs 1 verse

Proverbs 23:7 כְּמוֹ prep For as he thinks about the cost, so he is. "Eat and drink!" he says to you, But his heart is not with you.

Song of Solomon 2 verses

Isaiah 9 verses

Jeremiah 8 verses

Lamentations 2 verses

Ezekiel 2 verses

Hosea 3 verses

Zechariah 5 verses

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.

כמו (kᵉmôw) is a Hebrew word most often rendered “like.” It first appears in Genesis 19:15. Spanning 126 verses in 27 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. Related forms include כן, כן and כן. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890

according to

Modern gloss

About this word

Strong's H3644 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 →

126: distinct verses; The word appears in 126 distinct verses.
27 / 39: OT books; The word appears in 27 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 19:15: first appearance; The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 19:15.
Zechariah 10:8: last appearance; The latest occurrence is in Zechariah 10:8.
#316: by frequency; Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 316 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 126 occurrences in the concordance →

Most concentrated in

Psalms 25 verses 20%
Job 16 verses 13%
Exodus 11 verses 9%

By section of the Old Testament

Pentateuch 26 · 21%
Historical 23 · 18%
Wisdom 44 · 35%
Prophets 33 · 26%

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 126 distinct verses.

Writings (Ketuvim) 53 verses · 42%
Prophets (Nevi'im) 47 verses · 37%
Torah (Pentateuch) 26 verses · 21%

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: Like 4×, Side according 2×
American Standard Version: Like 4×
Berean Standard Bible: Like 28×, As 12×, Like you 11×
unfoldingWord Literal Text: Like 37×, Like you 18×, Like him 9×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H3644 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Like” 4×
“Side according” 2×

Plus 14 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 H3644 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Like” 4×

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 H3644 across 127 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Like” 28×
“As” 12×
“Like you” 11×
“Like me” 9×
“Like him” 7×
“Is like you” 6×
“Like it” 5×
“You” 4×
“I” 3×
“Is like me” 2×
“Like them” 2×
“With” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 34 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 16 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H3644 across 147 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Like” 37×
“Like you” 18×
“Like him” 9×
“Like me” 9×
“As” 8×
“Is like you” 7×
“Like it” 7×
“Is like me” 4×
“Like us” 4×
“You” 3×
“According to it” 2×
“And” 2×

Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 27 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 3 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.
- a. prep., as poet. syn. of כְּ, like, as, Ex 15:5 they went down כמו־אבן like a stone (hence in prose Ne 9:11), v 8 (ψ 78:13), Is 30:22; 51:6 (v. כֵּן), 26:17 כְּמוֹ הָרָה תַּקְרִיב לָלֶרֶת (see כְּ 1 c (2), on the constr.: so 41:25 ψ 58:5, 8a. 9), v 18 we have brought forth the like of, as it were, wind, Je 13;21; 15:18; 50:26 Ez 16:57 (כמו עת as at the time of: v. כְּ Note), Ho 7:4; 8:12; 13:7 Hb 3:14 (as it were), Zc 9:15; 10:2, 7 (as with wine: v. ib.) Elsewhere chiefly in ψψ (19 times) and Jb (11 times), as ψ 29:6; 61:7; 63:6; 78:69; 79:5; 88:6; 90:9, Jb 6:15; 10:22(×2); 12:3 כמו אלה the like of these things, 14:9 Ct 6:10; 7:2 La 4:6 כמו רגע (in prose כרגע). Repeated, like כְּ … כְּ, †ψ 58:10 and answered by כֵּן Is 26:17.—ψ 58:8 b כמו יתמוללו, as it were is against usage of כמו (with a vb.), and yields a lame sense: read perhaps ית׳ [חָצִיר] כמו (Lag Che); ψ 73:15 if I said, אֲסַפְּרָה כְמ֑וֹ, the text is untranslateable, the rendering thus for כמו being indefensible: prob. הֵנָּה has dropped out before the following הִנֵּה: for כְּמוֹ הֵנָּה the like of these things, cf. Jb 23:14 כָּהֵנָּה, and 12:3 supr. e.g. Exodus 15:5
- b. conj. = כַּאֲשֶׁר: (α) of time, once, †Gn 19:15 כְּמוֹ עָלָה הַשַּׁחַר when the dawn arose; (β) of mode, according as, †Zc 10:8 וְרָבוּ כְּמוֹ רָבוּ Pr 23:7 (answered by כֵּן).— e.g. Genesis 19:15
2. (before sfs.), see כְּ.

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

adv. and conj. like, as, when (lit. the like of what (viz.) …, a pleon. form of כְּ (v. מוֹ), and, like it, proposes a subst.: cf. Aramaic כְּמָא like ψ 78:68 Levy, usually כְּמָא דְּ like as; ܐܰܟ݂ܡܳܐ (i.e. ܐܰܝܟ݂ ܡܳܐ) like what, like, usually sq. ܕ ? like as; Sam. ࠊࠌࠄ; Arabic كَمَا; Ethiopic ከመ kama, like as, DiGr § 63 a Sab. כמו ZMG 1883, 394)—used 1. (56 times) as an indep. word (except Gn 19:15 Ne 9:11, only in poetry); 2. as an equivalent for כְּ before sfs., always before light ones, and occasionally before heavy ones (v. כְּ ad init.):—

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from כן (kên) (H3651) — thus.

TWOT: TWOT - 938

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.

כְּמוֹ

v. כְּמָה) as, like. Yalk. Ex. 246 הקשו לבם כ׳ אבן they made their hearts hard like stones (Mekh. B’shall., Shirah, s. 5 כאבן). With suffixes: כָּמוֹנִי, כָּמוֹךָ &c. like me, like thee &c. Ned. 9ᵇ, v. כְּמוֹת. Mekh. l. c., s. 8; a. fr.—V. כְּמוֹת.

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 71 distinct written forms H3644 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
כְּמוֹ	Preposition	Exodus 15:5	26
כְמוֹ	Preposition	Exodus 15:8	9
כְּמ֣וֹ	Preposition	Hosea 7:4	8
כְּמ֤וֹ	Preposition	Isaiah 26:17	4
כָּמֽוֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Deuteronomy 5:14	4
כְּמ֥וֹ	Preposition	Job 10:22	3
כָּמ֣וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	1 Kings 8:23	3
כָּמֹ֑/הוּ	Preposition	Deuteronomy 7:26	3
כָּמֹ֨/הוּ֙	Preposition	Exodus 11:6	3
כָּמֹֽ/הוּ	Preposition	Deuteronomy 4:32	3
כָמ֛וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	1 Kings 22:4	2
כָמ֨וֹ/ךָ֙	Preposition	1 Samuel 26:15	2
כָמ֨וֹ/נִי֙	Preposition	Jeremiah 49:19	2
כָמֹ֨/הוּ֙	Preposition	Exodus 9:18	2
כָמֽוֹ/נִי	Preposition	Judges 9:48	2
כְּ֭מוֹ/הֶם	Preposition	Psalms 115:8	2
כְּמ֖וֹ	Preposition	Isaiah 26:18	2
כָּמ֑וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Deuteronomy 18:18	2
כָּמ֔וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	1 Chronicles 17:20	2
כָּמ֖וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Jeremiah 10:6	2
כָּמ֗וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	2 Samuel 7:22	2
כָּמ֧וֹ/נִי	Preposition	1 Kings 22:4	2
כָּמֹ֔/הוּ	Preposition	Exodus 10:14	2
כָּמֹ֗/הוּ	Preposition	Joel 2:2	2
כָּמֽוֹ/נִי	Preposition	2 Samuel 9:8	2
וְ/כָמֹ/הוּ֩	Preposition	2 Kings 23:25	1
וְ/כָמֹ֖/הוּ	Preposition	Exodus 11:6	1
וּ/כְמ֥וֹ	Preposition	Isaiah 41:25	1
וּ/כְמוֹ֙	Preposition	Genesis 19:15	1
כְמ֑וֹ	Preposition	Psalms 73:15	1
כְמוֹ/הֶ֔ם	Preposition	Judges 8:18	1
כָ֫מ֥וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Psalms 35:10	1
כָֽמ֖וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Psalms 89:8	1
כָמ֑וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Psalms 50:21	1
כָמ֖וֹ/הָ	Preposition	Exodus 30:38	1
כָמ֖וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Genesis 44:18	1
כָמ֖וֹ/נוּ	Preposition	Isaiah 14:10	1
כָמ֗וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Deuteronomy 33:29	1
כָמ֛וֹ/נִי	Preposition	Nehemiah 6:11	1
כָמ֣וֹ/נִי	Preposition	Isaiah 44:7	1
כָמ֥וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	1 Kings 3:13	1
כָמֹ֔/נוּ	Preposition	Genesis 34:15	1
כָמֹ֖/הוּ	Preposition	Ezekiel 5:9	1
כָמֹ֖/נוּ	Preposition	2 Samuel 18:3	1
כָמֹ֗/הוּ	Preposition	2 Kings 18:5	1
כָמֹ֛/הוּ	Preposition	Haggai 2:3	1
כָמֹ֣/הוּ	Preposition	Job 36:22	1
כָמֹ֤/כָה	Preposition	Exodus 15:11	1
כָמֽוֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Psalms 71:19	1
כְּ/מוֹ	Pronoun, Indefinite	Psalms 102:3	1
כְּֽמוֹ	Preposition	Psalms 140:3	1
כְּֽמוֹ/כֶ֗ם	Preposition	Job 12:3	1
כְּמ֗וֹ	Preposition	Ezekiel 16:57	1
כָּמ֖וֹ/הָ	Preposition	1 Samuel 21:9	1
כָּמ֣וֹ/הָ	Preposition	Zechariah 5:3	1
כָּמ֣וֹ/נִי	Preposition	Isaiah 38:19	1
כָּמ֤וֹ/נִי	Preposition	2 Chronicles 18:3	1
כָּמ֥וֹ/הָ	Preposition	Zechariah 5:3	1
כָּמ֥וֹ/ךָ	Preposition	Job 35:8	1
כָּמ֨וֹ/ךָ֙	Preposition	1 Kings 3:12	1

The 60 most common forms are shown; 11 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3644, 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

כן kên H3651 thus

Shares the same root

Derived from this word

כנמא kᵉnêmâʼ H3660 thus

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.

Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 115 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 126 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.