לָהַט
to burn
also: blaze, scorch, kindle, blaze up 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘act.’
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H3857 appears in the Book of Joel — 2 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.
Joel
- Joel 1:19 לִהֲטָ֖ה Piel pf 3fs Yahweh, I cry to you, For the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, And the flame has burned all the trees of the field.
- Joel 2:3 תְּלַהֵ֣ט Piel impf 3fs A fire devours before them, And behind them, a flame burns. The land is as the garden of Eden before them, And behind them, a desolate wilderness. Yes, and no one has escaped 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.
At its core, להט (lâhaṭ) means “to burn.” First canonically at Deuteronomy 32:22, it enters the text early. It appears 11 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Psalms (45%), then Joel and Deuteronomy. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Piel, and more). Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3857 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Psalms 5 verses 45%
- Joel 2 verses 18%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 9%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 55%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 36%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 9%
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: Among them that are set on fire 1×, Burned up 1×, Burneth 1×
- American Standard Version: Among them that are set on fire 1×, Burned up 1×, Burneth 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Flames 2×, Scorches 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Kindles 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3857 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3857 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3857 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H3857 across 12 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.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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.
Qal
- Pt. act. אֵשׁ לֹהֵט ψ 104:4 a flaming fire (so Bae; אֵשׁ וָלַהַט Bi Che, cf. Ol), made into י׳’s servants; pl. לֹהֲטִים 57:5 (fig. of enemies, cf. לְבָאִם v a). e.g. Psalms 104:4
Piel
- Pf. 3ms. וְלִהַט Mal 3:19; 3 fs. לִהּטָה Jo 1:19; Impf. 3 fs. תְּלַהֵט Jo 2:3 + 4 times; וַתְּלַהֵט Dt 32:22; sf. וַתְּלַהֲטֵהוּ Is 42:25;—set ablaze, usually c. acc.;—foundation of mts., Dt 32:22 (subj. אֵשׁ, fig. of י׳’s judgment, ‖ קָדַח, יָקַד, אָכַל), cf. תְּל׳ הָרִים ψ 83:15 (in sim., subj. לֶהָבָה; ‖ כְּאֵשׁ תִּבְעַר־יָ֑עַר); of flame (לֶהָבָה) consuming trees Jo 1:19 (of effects of drought; ‖ אֵשׁ אָֽכְלָה); persons Mal 3:19 (subj. הַיּוֹם הַבָּא; ‖ בָּעַר); cf. ψ 97:3 (subj. אֵשׁ), 106:18 (subj. לֶהָבָה; ‖ וַתִּבְעַר־אֵשׁ); hyperb. of י׳’s wrath (חֵמָה אַפּוֹ וֶעֱזוּז מִלְחָמָה) consuming Jacob Is 42:25; of crocodile (hyperb.), נַפְשׁוֹ גֶּחָלִים תְּלַהֵ֑ט Jb 41:13 his breath setteth coals ablaze; abs. Jo 2:3, fig. of devastation by locusts (subj. לֶהָבָה; ‖ אָֽכְלָה אֵשׁ). e.g. Malachi 3:19
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
vb. blaze up, flame (NH id.; Syriac ܠܗܶܛ; Assyrian laʾâṭu, in der. forms);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
לָהַט
- to glisten, glow. Gen. R. s. 21, end מי מציל … מאש לוֹהֶטֶת זו what will save my children from this glowing fire (hell)?; a. e.—Part. pass. לָהוּט, f. לְהוּטָה; pl. לְהוּטִים, לְהוּטִין; לְהוּטוֹת glowing; (with אחר) passionately following, anxious for. Gen. R. s. 94 ל׳ אחר גרונו, v. גָּרוֹן. Y. Taan. VI, 69ᵇ; Pesik. Dibré, p. 114ᵃ שהיו ישראל ל׳ אחר וכ׳ (not שיהו) the Israelites were greedy for sweet things. Gen. R. s. 22 היו ל׳ אחר האדמה had a passion for agriculture. Cant. R. to I, 4 ל׳ … אחרי שכינה the Israelites were anxious for the Divine Presence; a. fr.—Tanḥ. Ḥuck. 4 (ref. to Ps. LVII, 5) שהיו לוֹהֲטִים אחר לה"ר (= לְהוּטִים) they had a passion for denunciation; Midr. Till. to Ps. VII; Yalk. ib. 637; Yalk. Kings 213 להוטים; Y. Peah I, 16ᵃ; a. e. e.g. Psalms 57:5
- to glow; to make glowing. Lev. R. s. 16 האש מְלַהֶטֶת סביבותיו the fire was shining around him. Gen. R. s. 21, end (ref. to Gen. III, 24) שהיא מתהפכת … ומְלַהַטְתּוֹ וכ׳ it (the fire of hell) turns around man and heats him through from top to bottom &c. Num. R. s. 18 לִיהֲטוֹ האש the fire seized him; a. e. e.g. Genesis 3:24
לְהַט
- , Pa. לַהֵט ch. same, to heat. Targ. Y. II, Deut. XXXII, 22 ולְהָטַת (prob. to be read: ולַהֲטת).
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 10 distinct written forms H3857 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| תְּלַהֵ֥ט | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Psalms 83:14 | 2 |
| וְ/לִהַ֨ט | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Malachi 4:1 | 1 |
| וַ/תְּלַהֲטֵ֤/הוּ | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Isaiah 42:25 | 1 |
| וַ/תְּלַהֵ֖ט | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Deuteronomy 32:22 | 1 |
| וּ/תְלַהֵ֖ט | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Psalms 97:3 | 1 |
| לִהֲטָ֖ה | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Joel 1:19 | 1 |
| לֹ֫הֲטִ֥ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 57:4 | 1 |
| לֹהֵֽט | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 104:4 | 1 |
| תְּלַהֵ֑ט | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Job 41:21 | 1 |
| תְּלַהֵ֣ט | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Joel 2:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3857, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
