לָקַק
to lap
also: lick, lap up fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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. Here: ‘pl. c. art.’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (29%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (29%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 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 H3952 appears — 5 distinct verses across 2 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.
Judges 3 verses
- Judges 7:5 יָלֹק֩ יָלֹ֣ק Qal impf 3ms Qal impf 3ms So he brought down the people to the water: and Yahweh said to Gideon, Everyone who laps of the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, him shall you set by himself; likewise everyone who bows down on his knees to drink.
- Judges 7:6 הַֽ/מֲלַקְקִ֤ים ptcl def.art + Piel ptcp.act mp The number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down on their knees to drink water.
- Judges 7:7 הַֽ/מֲלַקְקִים֙ ptcl def.art + Piel ptcp.act mp Yahweh said to Gideon, By the three hundred men who lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into your hand; and let all the people go every man to his place.
1 Kings 2 verses
- 1 Kings 21:19 לָקְק֤וּ יָלֹ֧קּוּ Qal pf 3cp Qal impf 3mp You shall speak to him, saying, Thus says Yahweh, Have you killed and also taken possession? You shall speak to him, saying, Thus says Yahweh, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your blood, even yours.
- 1 Kings 22:38 וַ/יָּלֹ֤קּוּ conj + Qal wimpf 3mp They washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood (now the prostitutes washed themselves [there]); according to the word of Yahweh which he spoke.
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.
The Hebrew verb לקק centers on the idea of “to lap.” A scarce word — 5 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. Judges dominates its distribution — 3 of 5 verses. Debuting at Judges 7:5, it then recurs through the corpus. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Qal and Piel. Dig into 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3952 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.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 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 5 occurrences in the concordance →
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: Lapped 2×
- American Standard Version: Lapped 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Lapped 2×, Licked up 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Laps 2×, Ones lapping 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3952 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H3952 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H3952 across 6 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3952 across 8 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 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
- Pf. 3 ms. לָֽקְקוּ 1 K 21:19; Impf. 3 ms. יָלֹק Ju 7:5(×2); 3 mpl. יָלֹ֫קּוּ 1 K 21:19, וַיָּלֹ֫קּוּ 1 K 22:38;—lap, יָלֹק בִּלְשׁוֹנוֹ מִן־הַמַּיִם Ju 7:5, like a dog v 5 (abs.); of dogs lapping up blood (acc.), 1 K 21:19(×2); 22:38. e.g. 1 Kings 21:19
Piel
- Pt. pl. c. art. הַמְֿלַקְקִים Ju 7:6 (בְּיָדָם אֶל־פִּיהֶם is erron. gloss, v. GFM), v 7; in both = lap, lap up (= Qal v 5). e.g. Judges 7:6
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. lap, lick (NH id., Pi.; Arabic لَقَّ lick, lap of dog (Wahrm));—
— 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.
לָֽקַק
- to lap, lick. Pesik. Zakh. p. 26ᵇ אומה שבאה לָלוֹק וכ׳ (not שבא); Tanḥ. Ki Thetse 9; Yalk. Deut. 938, v. לָק.
- same. Snh. 68ᵃ ככלב המְלַקֵּק וכ׳, v. חָסַר
- same. Par. IX, 3 מפני שהיא מֵלֶקֶת (ed. Dehr. מְלִקָּה) because it (the weasel) laps (lets the water drip back out of its mouth).
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 7 distinct written forms H3952 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַֽ/מֲלַקְקִ֤ים | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 7:6 | 1 |
| הַֽ/מֲלַקְקִים֙ | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 7:7 | 1 |
| וַ/יָּלֹ֤קּוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 1 Kings 22:38 | 1 |
| יָלֹ֣ק | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Judges 7:5 | 1 |
| יָלֹ֧קּוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 1 Kings 21:19 | 1 |
| יָלֹק֩ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Judges 7:5 | 1 |
| לָקְק֤וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | 1 Kings 21:19 | 1 |
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.
