כֶּ֫שֶׁף
witchcraft
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 4 times (67%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H3785 appears — 5 distinct verses across 4 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.
2 Kings 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 47:9 כְּשָׁפַ֔יִ/ךְ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2fs but these two things shall come to you in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood; in their full measure shall they come on you, in the multitude of your sorceries, and the great abundance of your enchantments.
- Isaiah 47:12 כְּשָׁפַ֔יִ/ךְ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2fs Stand now with your enchantments, and with the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth; if so be you shall be able to profit, if so be you may prevail.
Micah 1 verse
Nahum 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.
At its core, כשף (kesheph) means “witchcraft.” With only 5 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. Its uses concentrate in Isaiah (40% of all occurrences). First canonically at 2 Kings 9:22, it enters the text early. From the same root come כשף, כשף and אכשף. Dig into 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3785 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 100%
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: Witchcrafts 3×, Sorceries 2×
- American Standard Version: Witchcrafts 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Sorceries 3×, Witchcraft 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Sorceries 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3785 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3785 across 6 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3785 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H3785 across 7 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.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- sorcery, witchcraft
Word origin
Derived from כשף (kâshaph) (H3784) — to practice witchcraft.
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.
כָּשַׁף
- [to whisper, v. Fl. to Levy Talm. Dict. II, p. 459,] to think, devise, v. כּוּשְׁפָּא.
- to charm, practice sorcery (cmp. לָחַשׁ). Snh. 43ᵃ (suppressed in later eds., v. יֵשׁוּ) על שכי׳ והסית וכ׳ because he practiced sorcery and enticed &c. Ib. VII, 4 המְכַשֵּׁף he who practices witchcraft, expl. ib. 11 המכ׳ העושה מעשה וכ׳ he who produces a real effect is guilty, not he who produces an optical delusion, v. אָחַז; a. fr.—V. מְכַשֵּׁף. מְכַשֵּׁפָה.
כֶּשֶׁף
- , m., pl. כְּשָׁפִים(b. h.; preced.) sorcery. Ḥull. 7ᵇ (ref. to Deut. IV, 35) אין עוד מלבדו ואפי׳ כ׳ ‘there is none (no power) besides Him’, … not even sorcery (can do anything without the will of God); Snh. 67ᵇ (ed. ואפי׳ לדבר כ׳; v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 2); Yalk. Deut. 828.—Ber. 53ᵃ בנות ישראל מקטרות לכ׳ daughters of Israel (in large places) are suspected of letting incense rise for sorcerous practices. Erub. 64ᵇ בדורות אחרונים … פרוצות בכ׳ in these latter days when daughters of Israel are unrestrained in practicing sorcery. Snh. 67ᵃ מצויות בכ׳ habitually inclined to sorcery, v. כַּשְׁפָּנִית. Y. Kidd. IV, end, 66ᶜ בעלת כ׳ sorceress; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 4:35
כַּשָּׁף
- preced.) sorcerer.—Pl. כַּשָּׁפִים, כַּשָּׁפִין. Ḥull. 7ᵇ; Snh. 67ᵇ למה … כ̇שׁפ̇ים (Ms. M. מכשפים) why are they called kashshafim? מפני שמכֹחישׁין פ̇מליא של מעלה because they lessen the power of divine agencies. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXX, end כשפין (ed. Bub. כַּשְׁפָּנִין; oth. ed. מְכַשְּׁפִין); a. e.—V. מְכַשֵּׁף.
*כְּשָׁף
- (supposed to mean) wild plum-tree. Sabb. 23ᵃ שרף כ׳ וכ׳ Ms. M. a. Ar.; copyist’s correction in Ms. M. כטף; ed. קטף) resin of the plum-tree is the best for making ink.
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 5 distinct written forms H3785 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| כְּשָׁפַ֔יִ/ךְ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 47:9 | 2 |
| בִּ/כְשָׁפֶֽי/הָ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Nahum 3:4 | 1 |
| וּ/כְשָׁפֶ֖י/הָ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | 2 Kings 9:22 | 1 |
| כְשָׁפִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Micah 5:12 | 1 |
| כְּשָׁפִ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Nahum 3:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3785, 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 → 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 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
