מִבְחָר
choicest
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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 12 times (92%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 13 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4005 appears — 13 distinct verses across 8 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Exodus 1 verse
Deuteronomy 1 verse
2 Kings 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 22:7 מִבְחַר n c ms cs It happened that your choicest valleys were full of chariots, and the horsemen set themselves in array at the gate.
- Isaiah 37:24 מִבְחַ֣ר n c ms cs By your servants have you defied the Lord, and have said, With the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the innermost parts of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars of it, and the choice fir trees of it; and I will enter into its farthest height, the forest of its fruitful field;
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 22:7 מִבְחַ֣ר n c ms cs I will prepare destroyers against you, everyone with his weapons; and they shall cut down your choice cedars, and cast them into the fire.
- Jeremiah 48:15 וּ/מִבְחַ֥ר conj + n c ms cs Moab is laid waste, and they are gone up into his cities, and his chosen young men are gone down to the slaughter, says the King, whose name is Yahweh of Hosts.
Ezekiel 4 verses
- Ezekiel 23:7 מִבְחַ֥ר n c ms cs She bestowed her prostitution on them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them; and on whoever she doted, with all their idols she defiled herself.
- Ezekiel 24:4 מִבְחַ֥ר n c ms cs gather the pieces of it into it, even every good piece, the thigh, and the shoulder; fill it with the choice bones.
- Ezekiel 24:5 מִבְחַ֤ר n c ms cs Take the choice of the flock, and also a pile [of wood] for the bones under [the caldron]; make it boil well; yes, let the bones of it be boiled in the midst of it.
- Ezekiel 31:16 מִבְחַ֥ר n c ms cs I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to Sheol with those who descend into the pit; and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, were comforted in the lower parts of the earth.
Daniel 1 verse
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, מבחר (mibchâr) means “choicest.” Where the King James Version says “choice,” newer translations reach for “choicest of” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 13 verses across 8 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Ezekiel (31%), then Isaiah and Jeremiah. First canonically at Genesis 23:6, it enters the text early. Dig into 13-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4005 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 →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 13 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 13 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 69%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 23%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 8%
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†: Choice 5×, Chosen 3×
- American Standard Version†: Choice 5×, Chosen 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Choicest 4×, Finest 3×, Best 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Choicest of 5×, Best of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4005 across 12† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4005 across 12† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4005 across 12† 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 H4005 across 12† 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.
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.
מבחר I m. (choice) one of David’s warriors 1 Ch 11
מבחר II i, ii. מִבְחָר v. בחר.
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.] (f. Ez 24:5) choicest, best, cstr. מִבְחַר Dt 12:11 + 10 times; sf. מִבְחָרָיו Dn 11:15; vows Dt 12:11; valleys Is 22:7; fir trees Is 37:24; cedars Je 22:7; bones Ez 24:4; sepulchres Gn 23:6 (P); of the flock Ez 24:5; of the Assyrians Ez 23:7; captains Ex 15:4 (E poet.); young men Je 48:15; מבחר וטוב לבנון Ez 31:16 (del. וטוב 𝔊 Co); עַם מִבְחָרָיו Dn 11:15 = his choice troops.
II. n.pr.m. (choice) one of David’s warriors 1 Ch 11:38.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from בחר (bâchar) (H977) — to choose.
Forms in the corpus
The 8 distinct written forms H4005 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מִבְחַ֣ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Deuteronomy 12:11 | 3 |
| מִבְחַ֥ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 23:7 | 3 |
| וּ/מִבְחַ֥ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 15:4 | 2 |
| בְּ/מִבְחַ֣ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Genesis 23:6 | 1 |
| מִבְח֣וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | 2 Kings 19:23 | 1 |
| מִבְחַ֤ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 24:5 | 1 |
| מִבְחַר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 22:7 | 1 |
| מִבְחָרָ֔י/ו | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Daniel 11:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4005, 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
Shares the same root
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 → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. 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 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 13 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
- Genesis 23:6
- Exodus 15:4
- Deuteronomy 12:11
- 2 Kings 19:23
- Isaiah 22:7
- Jeremiah 22:7
- Ezekiel 23:7
- Daniel 11:15
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.
