כְּפִיר
young lion
‘young lion’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
28 distinct verses where H3715 appears in the Absolute state, across 12 books. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Nehemiah 1 verse
Job 2 verses
Psalms 6 verses
- Psalms 17:12 וְ֝/כִ/כְפִ֗יר conj + prep + n c ms He is like a lion that is greedy of his prey, As it were a young lion lurking in secret places.
- Psalms 34:10 כְּ֭פִירִים n c mp The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, But those who seek Yahweh shall not lack any good thing.
- Psalms 35:17 מִ֝/כְּפִירִ֗ים prep + n c mp Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue my soul from their destruction, My precious life from the lions.
- Psalms 58:6 כְּ֝פִירִ֗ים n c mp Break their teeth, God, in their mouth. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, Yahweh.
- Psalms 91:13 כְּפִ֣יר n c ms You will tread on the lion and cobra. You will trample the young lion and the serpent underfoot.
- Psalms 104:21 הַ֭/כְּפִירִים ptcl def.art + n c mp The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their food from God.
Proverbs 3 verses
- Proverbs 19:12 כַּ֭/כְּפִיר prep det + n c ms The king's wrath is like the roaring of a lion, But his favor is like dew on the grass.
- Proverbs 20:2 כַּ֭/כְּפִיר prep det + n c ms The terror of a king is like the roaring of a lion: He who provokes him to anger forfeits his own life.
- Proverbs 28:1 כִּ/כְפִ֥יר prep + n c ms The wicked flee when no one pursues; But the righteous are as bold as a lion.
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 5:29 כַּ/כְּפִירִ֤ים prep det + n c mp Their roaring will be like a lioness. They will roar like young lions. Yes, they shall roar, And seize their prey and carry it off, And there will be no one to deliver.
- Isaiah 11:6 וּ/כְפִ֤יר conj + n c ms The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.
- Isaiah 31:4 וְ/הַ/כְּפִ֜יר conj + ptcl def.art + n c ms For thus says Yahweh to me, As the lion and the young lion growling over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds are called forth against him, will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so will Yahweh of Hosts come down to fight on Mount Zion, and on the hill of it.
Jeremiah 3 verses
- Jeremiah 2:15 כְפִרִ֔ים n c mp The young lions have roared on him, and yelled; and they have made his land waste: his cities are burned up, without inhabitant.
- Jeremiah 25:38 כַּ/כְּפִ֖יר prep det + n c ms He has left his covert, as the lion; for their land is become an astonishment because of the fierceness of the oppressing [sword], and because of his fierce anger.
- Jeremiah 51:38 כַּ/כְּפִרִ֣ים prep det + n c mp They shall roar together like young lions; they shall growl as lions' cubs.
Ezekiel 5 verses
- Ezekiel 19:2 כְּפִרִ֖ים n c mp and say, What was your mother? A lioness: she couched among lions, in the midst of the young lions she nourished her cubs.
- Ezekiel 19:3 כְּפִ֣יר n c ms She brought up one of her cubs: he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured men.
- Ezekiel 19:5 כְּפִ֥יר n c ms Now when she saw that she had waited, and her hope was lost, then she took another of her cubs, and made him a young lion.
- Ezekiel 19:6 כְּפִ֣יר n c ms He went up and down among the lions; he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured men.
- Ezekiel 41:19 כְפִ֥יר n c ms so that there was the face of a man toward the palm tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side. [thus was it] made through all the house round about:
Hosea 1 verse
Amos 1 verse
Micah 1 verse
Nahum 1 verse
Zechariah 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.
כפיר (kᵉphîyr) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “young lion.” Debuting at Judges 14:5, it then recurs through the corpus. With 32 verses in 13 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Its lexical range runs to 2 senses. From the same root come כפר, כפור and כפר. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3715 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 →
- 32
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 32 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,086
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,086 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 32 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 32 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 20 verses · 63%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 38%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Young lions 10×, Young lion 8×, Lion 4×
- American Standard Version†: Young lions 10×, Lion 4×, Young lion 4×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Young lions 9×, Young lion 7×, Lion 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Young lions 10×, Young lion 9×, Like the young lion 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3715 across 32† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3715 across 31† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H3715 across 32† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3715 across 32† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear 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.
- young lion
- village
Word origin
I. n.m. young lion;—כ׳ Ju 14:5 + 16 times; pl. כְּפִרִים Je 2:15 + 3 times; כְּפִירִים Zc 11:3 + 7 times; sf. כְּפִירַיִךְ Na 2:14; כְּפִירֶיהָ Ez 38:13 (Co reads כנעניה);—lit. כ׳ אֲרָיוֹת Ju 14:5 young lion of lions; Am 3:4 ψ 17:12. It differs from whelp גּוּר Ez 19:2, 3 as old enough to hunt its prey, Je 25:38; Is 11:6; Zc 11:3; ψ 104:21; in sim. of roar of hostile army Is 5:29 (‖ לָבִיא) cf. Je 51:38 (‖ גּוֹרֵי אריות); sim. of י׳’s invincible might Is 31:4 (‖ אַרְיֵה); of Isr. among the nations, Mi 5:7; of Assyrian princes Na 2:12; of prince of Isr. Ez 19:5, 6; other cases are: ‖ לָבִיא Jb 38:39; ‖ שַׁחַל Ho 5:14 ψ 91:13 Jb 4:10; of bloodthirsty enemies ψ 34:11; 35:17; 58:7 Je 2:15; כ׳ גוים Ez 32:2, of young warriors Na 2:14; Ez 38:13 (?; v. Co supr.); righteous compared with, Pr 28:1; king’s wrath like roaring of, Pr 19:12; 20:2; of one of faces of cherubim Ez 41:19.
I. Ne 6:2, prob. = foregoing (𝔊 al. n. appell. = villages).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from כפר (kâphar) (H3722) — to atone.
Forms in the corpus
The 27 distinct written forms H3715 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 H3715, 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
- כפור kᵉphôwr H3713 bowl
- כפר kâphâr H3723 village
- כפר kôpher H3724 ransom
- כפר kippur H3725 atonement
- כפרת kappôreth H3727 mercy seat
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 8 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 28 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 32 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
- Judges 14:5
- Job 4:10
- Psalms 17:12
- Proverbs 19:12
- Isaiah 5:29
- Jeremiah 2:15
- Ezekiel 19:2
- Hosea 5:14
- Amos 3:4
- Micah 5:8
- Nahum 2:11
- Zechariah 11:3
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.
