לִבָּה
heart
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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 4 times (57%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 2 times (29%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H3826 appears — 7 distinct verses across 3 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.
Psalms 2 verses
- Psalms 7:9 לִ֭בּ֗וֹת n c fp Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, But establish the righteous; Their minds and hearts are searched by the righteous God.
- Psalms 125:4 בְּ/לִבּוֹתָֽ/ם prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3mp Do good, Yahweh, to those who are good, To those who are upright in their hearts.
Proverbs 4 verses
- Proverbs 15:11 לִבּ֥וֹת n c fp cs Sheol and Abaddon are before Yahweh-- How much more then the hearts of the children of men!
- Proverbs 17:3 לִבּ֣וֹת n c fp The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, But Yahweh tests the hearts.
- Proverbs 21:2 לִבּ֣וֹת n c fp Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, But Yahweh weighs the hearts.
- Proverbs 24:12 לִבּ֨וֹת n c fp If you say, "Behold, we didn't know this;" Doesn't he who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, doesn't he know it? Shall he not render to every man according to his work?
Ezekiel 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.
לבה (libbâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “heart.” It clusters heavily in Proverbs, which alone accounts for 57% of its uses. It turns up in 7 verses across 3 books, an uncommon footprint. Scripture first uses it in Psalms 7:9. It clusters with לב and לב under a shared root. 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 H3826 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 86%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 14%
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: Hearts 5×
- American Standard Version: Hearts 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Hearts 4×, Heart 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Hearts 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3826 across 8 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3826 across 8 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 H3826 across 7 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 H3826 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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.
- heart
Word origin
[ לִבָּה ] Ez 16:30 should be corrected
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from לב (lêb) (H3820) — heart.
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.
לָבָה
- , v. לבי
לבי
- (contr. of להב, to be bright; cmp. לבלב, לָבַן II); Pi. לִיבָּה, לִבָּה to blow ablaze, enkindle. B. Kam. VI, 4 (59ᵇ) בא אחר ולי׳ המְלַבֶּה חייב if a third person came (after one brought the wood and another the light), and blew the wood ablaze, he who fanned the flame is responsible; לִיבְּתָהּ הרוח וכ׳ (Y. ed. לִיבָּהוּ, Mish. Nap., Ms. H. a. R. לִבְּתוֹ, לִיבְּ׳, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 30) if the wind enkindled it, all are free. Ib. 60ᵃ לי׳ וליבתה הרוח if he blew and the wind set the fire ablaze, אם יש בְּלִבּוּיוֹ כדי ללַבּוֹתָהּ חייב if there was in his blow enough force to set it ablaze, he is guilty; Tosef. ib. VI, 22 נִיבָּה ונִיבְּתוֹ, כדי לנַבּוֹת … ed. Zuck. (Var. ל for נ).—B. Kam. l. c. מאן דתני ל׳ … ומאן דתני נ׳ וכ׳ he who teaches libbah is not at fault, nor is he who teaches nibbah (ref. for libbah to labbath, Ex. III, 2, for nibbah to נִיב, Is. LVII, 19); Y. ib. II, 5ᶜ top (ref. for nibbah to Jer. XX, 9 ‘it (the word of prophecy, v. נָבָא) was in my heart like a burning fire’). Bab. ib. l. c. כגון שלי׳ ברוח מצויה ולִבְּתוֹ וכ׳ it means, if he blew while there was ordinary air stirring, and then an unusual wind set in, and blew it ablaze. Ib. 59ᵇ מסר לו גחלת ול׳ he placed in his charge glowing coals, and he (the irresponsible person) did the blowing, opp. to מסר לו שלהבת. Y. Sabb. III, beg. 5ᶜ מְלַבֶּה עליה נעורת וכ׳ he lets hatchelled flax blaze over the hot ashes (so as to form a cover on which to place dishes for the Sabbath; Tosef. Sabb. III, 2 הדליקו). e.g. Exodus 3:2
- to flame up. Sabb. 37ᵃ קטמה ונִתְלַבְּתָה if after having covered the embers with ashes, the flames blazed up again; Y. ib. l. c. ונִתְלַבַּת.
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 6 distinct written forms H3826 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לִבּ֣וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Proverbs 17:3 | 2 |
| בְּ/לִבּוֹתָֽ/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 125:4 | 1 |
| לִ֭בּ֗וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 7:9 | 1 |
| לִבּ֥וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Proverbs 15:11 | 1 |
| לִבּ֨וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Proverbs 24:12 | 1 |
| לִבָּתֵ֔/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 16:30 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3826, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
