אָלָה
to swear
‘to swear’ is one of 5 main senses 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.
- 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.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘swear’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- 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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute 2 times (33%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H422 appears — 6 distinct verses across 5 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 1 verse
1 Samuel 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Hosea 2 verses
- Hosea 4:2 אָלֹ֣ה Qal inf.abs There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; They break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed.
- Hosea 10:4 אָל֥וֹת Qal inf.abs They make promises, swearing falsely in making covenants. Therefore judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field.
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.
אלה — transliterated ʼâlâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to swear.” Debuting at Judges 17:2, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 6 verses across 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a third of its appearances fall in Hosea. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Hiphil, and more). See the sense tree, 6-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H422 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 83%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 17%
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†: Swearing 2×
- American Standard Version†: Cause him to swear 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Curse 1×, Cursing 1×, Oaths 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Adjure him 1×, For 1×, Had adjured 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H422 across 6† 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 H422 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 H422 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H422 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
9 senses and sub-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 9 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.
אלה I swear, curse (cf. I. אלה? so Thes LagOr ii. 3)
Qal
- Pf. 1 K 8:31 (= 2 Ch 6:22 all Vrss Th Bö Bä Kp reading וְאָלָה); אָלִית Ju 17:2; Inf. abs. אָלֹה Ho 4:2; אָלוֹת Ho 10:4. e.g. 1 Kings 8:31
- 1. swear, take oath before God 1 K 8:31 (= 2 Ch 6:22); in covenants Ho 4:2; 10:4 (falsely). e.g. 1 Kings 8:31
- 2. curse Ju 17:2. e.g. Judges 17:2
Hiphil
- Impf. וַיֹּ֫אֶ֗ל 1 S 14:24; Inf. לְהַאֲלֹתוֹ 1 K 8:31 = 2 Ch 6:22 adjure, put under oath. e.g. 1 Samuel 14:24
אלה II oath Gn 26
- 1. oath in testimony Lv 5:1 Nu 5:21(×2) (P) Pr 29:24; בא באלה come into an oath Ne 10:30; הביא באלה bring into an oath Ez 17:13; נשׂא אלה 1 K 8:31 (= 2 Ch 6:22). e.g. Leviticus 5:1
- 2. oath of covenant Gn 24:41(×2); 26:28 (J) Dt 29:11, 13; בזה אלה despise an oath Ez 16:59; 17:16, 18, 19. e.g. Genesis 24:41
- 3. curse (a) from God Nu 5:23 (P) Dt 29:18, 19, 20; 30:7 2 Ch 34:24 Is 24:6 Je 23:10 Dn 9:11 Zc 5:3; (b) from men Jb 31:30 ψ 10:7; 59:13. e.g. Numbers 5:23
- 4. execration in the phrase היה לאלה become an execration Nu 5:27 (P) Je 29:18; 42:18; 44:12. e.g. Numbers 5:27
אלה III wail (Aramaic אֲלָא, ܐܶܠܴܐ ) only
Qal
- Imv. fs. אֱלִי Jo 1:8 (v. אַלְלַי). e.g. Joel 1:8
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. vb. swear, curse (cf. I. אלה? so Thes LagOr ii. 3)—
II. n.f. oath Gn 26:28 +; sf. אָלָתִי, אָלָתוֹ Gn 24:41 + (4 times); pl. אָלוֹת Dt 29:20 + (4 times)
III. vb. wail (Aramaic אֲלָא, ܐܶܠܴܐ ) only
— 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.
אָלָה
- to curse, v. אלי.
אָלָה ²
- imprecation, curse. Sot. II, 5 (17ᵃ); a. fr.—Pl. אָלוֹת. Ib. a. e.
אֵלֶּה
- c. pl. (b. h.; v. preced.) these, those (cmp. הרי). Ex. R. s. 30 v’elleh (and this) adds to the preceding (continues), elleh (these) restricts. V. אֵלּוּ.
אֵלָה
- v. preced. ws.) terebinth. Shebi. VII, 5.
אלה
- Sabb. 90ᵃ Ar., v. אֵילָא 3.
אַלָּה
- Josh. XXIV, 26; v. אַלָּתָא) [pointed, prominent] e.g. Joshua 24:26
- 1. lance, fork. Kel. XVI, 8 חפוי הא׳, v. חִפּוּי. Pes. 57ᵃ אוי לי מֵאַלָּתָן woe to me (I am afraid) of their fork (weapon). Sabb. VI, 3 (63ᵃ) ed. (Ms. אלא); Y. ibid. 8ᵇ (expl. דייקרן).
- 2. sign-pole, used in the barn as a mark. Ib.; Y. Maasr. I, 49ᵃ bot.; Tosef. Ter. III, 11 משתיעקר הא׳ (ed. Zuck. משיתעשר, corr. acc.) as soon as the sign-pole (fork) is removed (indicating that the grain is ready for use and priestly gifts).
אֱלָהּ
- (= h. אֱלוֹהַּ) God. Dan. III, 28; a. fr.—Targ. O. Deut. XXXIII, 26; a. fr.—Lev. R. s. 5, end את אלה רב Ar. (ed. אלוה). Y. B. Mets. II, 8ᶜ אלההון דיהודאי the God of the Jews. Y. Snh. X, 28ᵇ.—Pl. (also plur. majest.) אֱלָהִין. Dan. II, 11; a. e.—אֱלָהַיָּא. Jer. X, 11. Targ. Ps. CXXXVI, 2 אלהי אלהיא the God of gods. [Gen. R. s. 26 כומריא גנבו א׳ וכ׳ (read אלהון) when priests rob—who would swear by their god?] Ib. (ref. to Gen. VI, 2).—Lev. R. s. 33 תמן קריין … אֱלָהַיָּיא there (in Rome) they call their kings gods. e.g. Daniel 3:28
אלי I
- to curse. Sifré Num. 18 (ref. to Num. XVIII, 21) לאלה שיהו אָלִין בה וכ׳ ‘as a curse’ means that people shall curse by her (pointing to her), ‘may happen unto thee what happened to …’. e.g. Numbers 18:21
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 H422 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אָל֥וֹת | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute | Hosea 10:4 | 1 |
| אָלִית֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular | Judges 17:2 | 1 |
| אָלָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 6:22 | 1 |
| אָלֹ֣ה | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute | Hosea 4:2 | 1 |
| וַ/יֹּאֶל֩ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Samuel 14:24 | 1 |
| לְ/הַֽאֲלֹת֑/וֹ | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | 1 Kings 8:31 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H422, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
