לַ֫יִשׁ
lion
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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H3918 appears in the Book of Job — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Job
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.
ליש (layish) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “lion.” With only 3 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. Job dominates its distribution — 1 of 3 verses. It first appears in Job 4:11. Related forms include לוש, לוש and ליש. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3918 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 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 3 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 67%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 33%
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 3 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†: Old lion 2×
- American Standard Version†: Lion 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Lion 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Lion 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3918 across 3† 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 H3918 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H3918 across 3† 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 H3918 across 3† 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.
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 0 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.
ליש I loc. (on meaning lion, cf. RSSem i. 156 (om. 2nd ed.))
ליש II m. father of Michal’s second husband, 1 S 25
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
I. n.m. Jb 4:11 lion (Arabic لَيْثٌ, 𝔗 לֵיתָא; Assyrian nêšu, lion is comp. by Hal (cf. HptKAT2, 510) BaZA iii. 1888, 60);—lion Jb 4:11 Is 30:6 (‖ לָבִיא), ל׳ גִּבּוֹר בַּבְּהֵמָה Pr 30:30.
II. n.pr.loc. (on meaning lion, cf. RSSem i. 156 (om. 2nd ed.));—former name of Dan., in extreme north of Canaan, Ju 18:7, 14, 27, 29 (v. דָּן p. 192 b); 𝔊 Λαισα; = לָשֶׁם q.v.; cf. BuhlGeogr. § 124.
III. n.pr.m. father of Michal’s second husband, 1 S 25:44 + 2 S 3:15 Qr (Kt לושׁ), 𝔊 Αμεις, Σελλης, A Λα(ε)ις, 𝔊L Ιωας, Σελλειμ.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from לוש (lûwsh) (H3888) — to knead.
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.
יֵשׁ
- 1. being, substance, wealth (of knowledge &c.). Y. Ned. V, end, 39ᵇ; Succ. 28ᵃ; B. Bath. 134ᵃ (Prov. VIII, 21, applied to R. Joh. b. Zaccai). e.g. Proverbs 8:21
- 2. there is, there are, v. אִית. Ber. VI, 4 אם יש ביניהם וכ׳ if there is among them one species &c. Peah VIII, 8 מי שיש לו וכ׳ he who possesses &c. Ḥag. 14ᵇ יש נאה דורש וכ׳ many a one preaches well but does not act well; a. v. fr.—יש אומרים (abbr. י"א) some say (anonymous authority). Hor. 13ᵇ אסיקו … ולר׳ נתן י"א the editors introduced ‘others say’ for R. M. and ‘some say’ for R. Nathan. B. Bath. 93ᵇ וי"א אף הוצאה and some say, he must indemnify him also for carrying the seed out; מאן י"א who is meant by ‘some say’? (v. Tosaf. a. l.). Ab. V, 6; a. v. fr.—יֶשְׁנוֹ he is, it is. Kidd. I, 10 כל שי׳ במקרא וכ׳ whosoever is (engaged) in the study of the Bible &c. Ḥag. 4ᵇ כל שי׳ בביאה י׳ וכ׳ whosoever is bound to visit the Temple, is also bound &c., v. הֲבָאָה; a. fr.—יֶשְׁנָהּ she is, it is. Kidd. 48ᵃ, a. fr. י׳ לשכירות וכ׳ the relation of employment exists from beginning to end, i.e. the employer is under obligation for every portion of the contracted labor, opp. אינה ל׳ … אלא בסוף the obligation takes effect only when the work is finished; a. fr.
לַיִשׁ I
- (b. h.) lion. Snh. 94ᵇ bot. (ref. to לַיְשָׁה, Is. X, 30) מהאי לא … דמתיל כאריה of him (Sennaherib) be not afraid, but be afraid of Nebucadnezzar who is compared to a lion (Jer. IV, 7). Ib. 95ᵃ מי דמי התם ארי הכא ל׳ how can you draw an analogy between these two passages?; there (Is. l. c.) layish is used, while here it is ări!—Ib. ששה שמות … וכ׳ the lion goes by six appellations &c., v. לָבִיא; Ab. d’R. N. ch. XXXIX; ib. II Vers. ch. XLIII; Yalk. Prov. 959, v. לוּשׁ; a. e. e.g. Isaiah 10:30
לַיִשׁ II
- (b. h.) pr. n. pl.
- 1. Laish, the northern limit of Palestine, called Dan. Tanḥ. Ki Thissa 14 (ref. to Jud. XVIII, 27) ל׳ זו פמיאס L. is Paneas; ib. R’eh 16; a. e. e.g. Judges 18:27
- 2. Laish, or (Laishah), prob. between Anathoth and Gallim. Snh. 94ᵇ, v. preced.
לַיִשׁ III
- dough, v. לַיִישׁ.
לִישׁ
- Targ. O. Ex. XII, 39 לֵי׳ (Ms. I לַיְי׳; Y. לִישָׁא). Targ. Y. ib. XVI, 2. Targ. Jer. VII, 18 ליי׳ ed. Lag.; a. e.—Y. Pes. III, beg. 29ᵈ מלמולין דליש crumbs of dough. Ab. Zar. 76ᵇ top, v. גְּדָנְפָא. B. Kam. 18ᵃ בלישא (not בלישה), v. ווּס.—Y. Ḥag. III, beg. 78ᵈ [read:] כבהדין לייש as if (they drove nails) into dough.—Pl. לֵישִׁין. Targ. Y. Ex. XII, 34 לֵישֵׁיהוֹן (O. ed. Berl. לֵישְׁהוֹן, Bxt. לִישָׁתְהוֹן).
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 2 distinct written forms H3918 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לַ֭יִשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 4:11 | 2 |
| וָ/לַ֣יִשׁ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 30:6 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3918, 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
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 → 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
