אֱלִיל
worthless
also: of nought, good for nothing fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 10 times (50%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 6 times (30%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 4 times (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 20 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H457 appears — 18 distinct verses across 9 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.
Leviticus 2 verses
- Leviticus 19:4 הָ֣/אֱלִילִ֔ים ptcl def.art + n c mp "'Don't turn to idols, nor make molten gods for yourselves. I am Yahweh your God.
- Leviticus 26:1 אֱלִילִ֗ם n c mp "'You shall make for yourselves no idols, neither shall you raise up an engraved image or a pillar, neither shall you place any figured stone in your land, to bow down to it: for I am Yahweh your God.
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 8 verses
- Isaiah 2:8 אֱלִילִ֑ים n c mp Their land also is full of idols. They worship the work of their own hands, That which their own fingers have made.
- Isaiah 2:18 וְ/הָ/אֱלִילִ֖ים conj + ptcl def.art + n c mp The idols shall utterly pass away.
- Isaiah 2:20 אֱלִילֵ֣י אֱלִילֵ֣י n c mp cs n c mp cs In that day, men shall cast away their idols of silver, And their idols of gold, Which have been made for themselves to worship, To the moles and to the bats;
- Isaiah 10:10 הָ/אֱלִ֑יל ptcl def.art + n c ms As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, whose engraved images did excel them of Jerusalem and of Samaria;
- Isaiah 10:11 וְ/לֶ/אֱלִילֶ֑י/הָ conj + prep + n c mp cs + sfx pers 3fs shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?
- Isaiah 19:1 אֱלִילֵ֤י n c mp cs The burden of Egypt. Behold, Yahweh rides on a swift cloud, and comes to Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall tremble at his presence; and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it.
- Isaiah 19:3 הָֽ/אֱלִילִים֙ ptcl def.art + n c mp The spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst of it; and I will destroy the counsel of it: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to those who have familiar spirits, and to the wizards.
- Isaiah 31:7 אֱלִילֵ֣י וֶ/אֱלִילֵ֖י n c mp cs conj + n c mp cs For in that day they shall cast away every man his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made to you for a sin.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Habakkuk 1 verse
Zechariah 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.
The Hebrew adjective אליל centers on the idea of “worthless.” Its earliest occurrence is Leviticus 19:4. It turns up in 18 verses across 9 books, an uncommon footprint. The word gravitates to Isaiah (44%), then Leviticus and Psalms. Alongside “worthless” the lexicon also lists “of nought” and “good for nothing” — part of its full sense range. Dig into 18-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H457 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 →
- 18
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 18 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,513
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,513 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 18 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 18 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 12 verses · 67%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 22%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 11%
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: Idols 11×, Are idols 2×
- American Standard Version: Idols 9×, Are idols 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Idols 11×, Are idols 2×, Worthless 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Idols 6×, Idols of 5×, Are idols 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H457 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H457 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H457 across 17 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H457 across 20 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 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.
- a. the shepherd of worthlessness = the worthless shepherd
- b. concr. worthless gods, idols
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
אֱלִיל n.m. insufficiency, worthlessness
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אל (ʼal) (H408) — not.
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.
אֱלִיל
- (אלל to roll, sec. r. of אול; cmp. חול a. גִּלּוּלִים)
- 1. (cacophem.) idol. Ab. Zar. IV, 3 (Talm. ed. ע"ז); a. e.—Pl. אֱלִילִים. עבודת א׳ (abbr. ע"א) idolatry; also idol (cmp. יִרְאָה). Snh. 97ᵇ. Yoma 9ᵇ; a fr.
- 2. offal of meat, v. אֱלָל.
אֱלִיל ²
- —Pl. אֱלִילַיָּא. Targ. Y. Lev. I, 2.
אֱלֵיל
- (= יְלֵיל) to lament.Targ. Is. XV, 4 (XIV, 31); Joel I, 11. e.g. Joel 1:11
אַלֵּיל
- Pa. of אֲלַל.
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 17 distinct written forms H457 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H457, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 18 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
- Leviticus 19:4
- 1 Chronicles 16:26
- Job 13:4
- Psalms 96:5
- Isaiah 2:8
- Jeremiah 14:14
- Ezekiel 30:13
- Habakkuk 2:18
- Zechariah 11:17
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.
