אִלֵּם
mute
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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 4 times (67%)
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (33%)
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 H483 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 35:6 אִלֵּ֑ם adj Adjective ms Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the mute shall sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
- Isaiah 56:10 אִלְּמִ֔ים adj Adjective mp His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they can't bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber.
Habakkuk 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.
“mute” is the headline sense of the Hebrew adjective אלם (ʼillêm). First canonically at Exodus 4:11, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 6 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Isaiah. It shares a root with אלם, אולם and אלם. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H483 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) 3 verses · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 33%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 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).
- King James Version: Dumb 4×
- American Standard Version: Dumb 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mute 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mute 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H483 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H483 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H483 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear 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 H483 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.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- mute, silent, dumb, unable to speak
Word origin
adj. dumb, unable to speak; Ex 4:11 מִי שָׂם פֶּה לָֽאָדָם אוֹ מִי יָשׂוּם אִלֵּם; Is 56:10 כְּלָבִים אִלְּמִים fig. of false proph.; of idols אֱלִילִים א׳ Hb 2:18; as subst. Pr 31:8 ψ 38:14 Is 35:6.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אלם (ʼâlam) (H481) — to bind.
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.
אָלַם
- , v. אָלַל)
- 1. [to surround]; to connect, tie (cmp. אסר. חגר); intr. to be tied up, excluded, lonely, mute; v. אִלֵּם, אַלְמוֹן II, אַלְמָנָה, אוּלָם.
- 2. to grow, be strong, v. אֲלַם. Cmp. אַלְמוֹן I. [Cmp. אֵלֶם Ps. LVIII, 2; LXX ἄρα, a. v. אוּלָם I.] e.g. Psalms 58:2
אֲלַם
- intr. אֲלֵים (אַלֵּים Pa., עלים) (v. preced.)
- 1. to be or grow strong, to grow. Targ. I Chr. XXII, 12 (13) אֲלַם (h. text אֱמָץ, Var. עילם). Targ. O. Deut. XXXI, 6; 7; 23 ed. Vien. א׳ (ed. Berl. ע׳, v. Berl. Targ. O. II, p. 59).—B. Bath. 124ᵃ; 135ᵇ (he left them) דיקלא וא׳ a slender palm-tree and it grew thick.
- 2. to tie, v. אֲלוּמָּא.
- 3. to be mute; v. Ithp.
- 1. to be strong, v. supra.
- 2. to strengthen, support. Targ. II Chr. XI, 17; a. e. Part. pass. f. מְאַלְּמָא resolved, insisting upon. Targ. Ruth I, 18 (h. text מתאמצת).—B. Kam. 90ᵃ אַלְמוּהָ רבנן וכ׳ the Rabbis fortified the husband’s right (gave him superior privileges). Kidd. 43ᵃ אַלּוּמֵי קא מְאַלִּימְנָא למילתיה (Rashi אַלְּמוּהָ) we (the court) give him privileges.
- 3. to overpower. Sabb. 156ᵇ אַלְּמֵיה יצריה his appetite overwhelmed him.
- 1. to make one’s self strong, to summon strength. Targ. Job XXXVI, 19.
- 2. to become mute, be silenced. Targ. Ps. XXXIX, 10. Targ. Koh. XII, 6. [Targ. Ps. XC, 10 מִתְאַלְּמִין (for h. text בָּהֶם?). [Targ. Job VI, 6 Ms. Vers. מִתְאַלֵּם (?), h. text חלמות!.]
אִלֵּם
- 1. cmp. חֵרֵשׁ) mute, unable to speak, also ignorant. Ter. I, 6; a. fr.—Ruth. R. to IV, 1 (ref. to almoni, Ruth. l. c.) א׳ היה מד"ת he was unable to speak of (excluded from) the Law (ignorant).—Pl. אִילְּ׳ אִלְּמִין אִלְּמִים. Snh. 71ᵃ; 100ᵃ.—Fem. אִלֶּמֶת, אִילֶּ׳. Num. R. s. 9. Ḥull. 79ᵃ. Sot. 10ᵇ אי׳; a. e.
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 H483 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אִלְּמִ֔ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 56:10 | 1 |
| אִלְּמִֽים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Habakkuk 2:18 | 1 |
| אִלֵּ֑ם | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 35:6 | 1 |
| אִלֵּ֔ם | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 4:11 | 1 |
| וּ֝/כְ/אִלֵּ֗ם | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 38:13 | 1 |
| לְ/אִלֵּ֑ם | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 31:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H483, 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
- אולם ʼûwlâm H197 porch
- אלם ʼêlem H482 in silence
- אלמה ʼălummâh H485 sheaf
- אלמן ʼalmân H488 widowed
- אלמן ʼalmôn H489 widowhood
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 8 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). 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.
