לִשָּׁן
language
‘language’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
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.
Grammatical forms
- Particle, Definite Article 6 times (86%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 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 H3961 appears — 7 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Daniel 7 verses
- Daniel 3:4 וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּֽ/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Then the herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, peoples, nations, and languages,
- Daniel 3:7 וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֗/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Therefore at that time, when all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe, and all kinds of music, all the peoples, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshiped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.
- Daniel 3:29 וְ/לִשָּׁ֗ן conj + n c ms Therefore I make a decree, that every people, nation, and language, which speak anything evil against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill; because there is no other god who is able to deliver after this sort.
- Daniel 4:1 וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֛/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Nebuchadnezzar the king, to all the peoples, nations, and languages, who dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you.
- Daniel 5:19 וְ/לִשָּׁ֣נַיָּ֔/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art and because of the greatness that he gave him, all the peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him: whom he would he killed, and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he raised up, and whom he would he put down.
- Daniel 6:25 וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֛/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art Then king Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages, who dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you.
- Daniel 7:14 וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֖/א conj + n c mp det + ptcl def.art There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
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, לשן (lishshân) means “language.” Its uses cluster heavily in Daniel (100% of all occurrences). With 7 verses in 1 book, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. The King James Version usually renders it “languages,” while modern versions prefer “language” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. 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 H3961 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.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 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 →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 7 verses 100%
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) 7 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: Languages 6×
- American Standard Version: Languages 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Language 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Languages 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3961 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3961 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3961 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 H3961 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.
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.
- tongue, language
- people (figuratively)
Word origin
Derived from לשון (lâshôwn) (H3956) — tongue.
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.
לָשַׁן
- , Hif. הִלְשִׁין (b. h.; to slander, speak evil of. Esth. R. to III, 9 עמד שטן וה׳ עליהם וכ׳ Satan arose and denounced them (the Israelites) before the Lord. Ex. R. s. 3 מה הנחש כשה׳ וכ׳ as well as I smote the serpent when he spoke evil (of the Lord). Ib. לקח את שלו על שה׳ was punished because he had spoken lightly (of the Israelites, Ex. IV, 1); a. fr. e.g. Exodus 4:1
לְשַׁן
- , Af. אַלְשֵׁן ch. same. Targ. Prov. XXX, 10.
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 H3961 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֛/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:1 | 2 |
| וְ/לִשָּׁ֗ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 3:29 | 1 |
| וְ/לִשָּׁ֣נַיָּ֔/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 5:19 | 1 |
| וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 7:14 | 1 |
| וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּ֗/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 3:7 | 1 |
| וְ/לִשָּׁנַיָּֽ/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 3:4 | 1 |
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.
