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לָכִישׁ

Lachish

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Lachish’ fuller range ↓

H3923 Strong's Hebrew
Lâkîysh Transliteration
/law-keesh'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 24 appearances

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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.

לכיש — transliterated Lâkîysh — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Lachish.” It first appears in Joshua 10:3. With 22 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Joshua (45% of all occurrences). Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Lachish
Modern gloss
Lachish
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H3923 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 →

22
distinct verses
The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
7 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
Joshua 10:3
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Joshua 10:3.
Micah 1:13
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Micah 1:13.
#1,327
by frequency
Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,327 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 22 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 18 · 82%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 4 · 18%

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 22 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 82%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 18%

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: Lachish 22×
  • American Standard Version: Lachish 21×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Lachish 24×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Lachish 23×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H3923 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Lachish” 22×

Plus 2 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 H3923 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Lachish” 21×

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 H3923 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Lachish” 24×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H3923 across 23 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Lachish” 23×

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.

  1. Lachish = "invincible"
  2. a city lying south of Jerusalem on the borders of Simeon and which belonged to the Amorites until conquered by Joshua…

Word origin

n.pr.loc.—so Jos 10:3 +; c. ה loc. לָכִ֫ישָׁה Jos 10:31 + 5 times;—Canaanitish (Amorit.) city, with king, Jos 10:3, 5, 23 (all JE), v 31; 12:11 (both D); (= Tel el-Amarna Lakiša, Lakisi WklTA Tablets, Nos. 217, 218, 180, 181); captured by Jos 10:32, 33, 34, 35 (all D); reckoned to Judah Mi 1:13 Je 34:7 Jos 15:39 (P), cf. 2 K 14:19(×2) = 2 Ch 25:27(×2), 2 Ch 11:9 Ne 11:30; base of Assyrian operations 2 K 18:14, cf. 2 Ch 32:9, also 2 K 18:17; 19:8 = Is 36:2; 37:8 (= Assyrian Lakisi SchrCOT 2 K 18:13); prob. = mod. Tell el-Ḥesy, c. 33 miles SW. from Jerusalem FJBMound of Many Cities, 1893 BuhlGeogr. § 103 GASmGeogr. 234; > Umm el-Lâḳis vdVeldeMem. 320 Guérin Judeé ii. 299 ff.; Um Lâḳis opp. by RobBR ii. 47.—𝔊 Λαχεις.

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Origin: from an unused root of uncertain meaning

Part of speech: Proper Name Location


Forms in the corpus

The 15 distinct written forms H3923 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
לָכִ֑ישָׁ/ה Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 25:27 3
לָכִ֖ישׁ Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 11:9 3
לָכִ֑ישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 10:33 2
לָכִ֔ישָׁ/ה Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 25:27 2
לָכִ֜ישׁ Noun, Proper 2 Kings 18:17 2
לָכִישׁ֙ Noun, Proper Jeremiah 34:7 2
מִ/לָּכִֽישׁ Noun, Proper 2 Kings 19:8 2
לְ/לָכִֽישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 10:35 1
לָכִ֔ישׁ Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 32:9 1
לָכִ֛ישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 10:3 1
לָכִ֣ישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 10:5 1
לָכִ֥ישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 15:39 1
לָכִ֨ישָׁ/ה Noun, Proper 2 Kings 18:14 1
מִ/לָּכִ֖ישׁ Noun, Proper Joshua 10:34 1
מִ/לָּכִ֧ישׁ Noun, Proper Isaiah 36:2 1

Bible dictionary

Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Lachish). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.

Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897

Impregnable, a royal Canaanitish city in the Shephelah, or maritime plain of Palestine (Josh. 10:3, 5; 12:11). It was taken and destroyed by the Israelites (Josh. 10:31-33). It afterwards became, under Rehoboam, one of the strongest fortresses of Judah (2 Chr. 10:9). It was assaulted and probably taken by Sennacherib (2 Kings 18:14, 17; 19:8; Isa. 36:2). An account of this siege is given on some slabs found in the chambers of the palace of Koyunjik, and now in the British Museum. The inscription has been deciphered as follows:, "Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment before the city of Lachish: I gave permission for its slaughter." (See NINEVEH.)

Lachish has been identified with Tell-el-Hesy, where a cuneiform tablet has been found, containing a letter supposed to be from Amenophis at Amarna in reply to one of the Amarna tablets sent by Zimrida from Lachish. This letter is from the chief of Atim (=Etam, 1 Chr. 4:32) to the chief of Lachish, in which the writer expresses great alarm at the approach of marauders from the Hebron hills. "They have entered the land," he says, "to lay waste...strong is he who has come down. He lays waste." This letter shows that "the communication by tablets in cuneiform script was not only usual in writing to Egypt, but in the internal correspondence of the country. The letter, though not so important in some ways as the Moabite stone and the Siloam text, is one of the most valuable discoveries ever made in Palestine" (Conder's Tell Amarna Tablets, p. 134).

Excavations at Lachish are still going on, and among other discoveries is that of an iron blast-furnace, with slag and ashes, which is supposed to have existed B.C. 1500. If the theories of experts are correct, the use of the hot-air blast instead of cold air (an improvement in iron manufacture patented by Neilson in 1828) was known fifteen hundred years before Christ. (See FURNACE.)

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(invincible), a city lying south of Jerusalem, on the borders of Simeon, and belonging to the Amorites, the king of which joined with four others, at the invitation of Adonizedek king of Jerusalem, to chastise the Gibeonites for their league with Israel. (Joshua 10:3,5) They were routed by Joshua at Beth-horon, and the king of Lachish fell a victim with the others under the trees at Makkedah. ver. (Joshua 10:26) The destruction of the town shortly followed the death of the king. vs. (Joshua 10:31-33) In the special statement that the attack lasted two days, in contradistinction to the other cities which were taken in one (see ver. 35), we gain our first glimpse of that strength of position for which Lachish was afterward remarkable. Lachish was one of the cities fortified and garrisoned by Rehoboam after the revolt of the northern kingdom. (2 Chronicles 11:9) In the reign of Hezekiah it was one of the cities taken by Sennacherib. This siege is considered by Layard and Hincks to be depicted on the slabs found by the former in one of the chambers of the palace at Kouyunjik. After the return from captivity, Lachish with its surrounding "fields" was reoccupied by the Jews. (Nehemiah 11:30)

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

who walks, or exists, of himself

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 20 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 22 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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