אַלְמָנָה
widow
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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
2 verses where H490 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Isaiah. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Isaiah
- Isaiah 9:17 אַלְמְנֹתָי/ו֙ n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms Therefore the Lord will not rejoice over their young men, neither will he have compassion on their fatherless and widows; for everyone is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaks folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
- Isaiah 13:22 בְּ/אַלְמנוֹתָ֔י/ו prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms Wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
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 noun אלמנה centers on the idea of “widow.” Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 38:11. Spanning 54 verses in 16 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Related forms include אלמן and אלמנות. Dig into 54-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H490 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 →
- 54
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 54 distinct verses.
- 16 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 16 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #678
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 678 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 54 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 11 verses 20%
- Job 6 verses 11%
- Isaiah 6 verses 11%
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 54 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 23 verses · 43%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 17 verses · 31%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 14 verses · 26%
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: Widow 32×, Widows 8×, Widow's 2×
- American Standard Version: Widow 30×, Widows 8×
- Berean Standard Bible: Widow 28×, Widows 9×, Widowed 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Widow 32×, Widows 12×, Or for the widow 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H490 across 54 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H490 across 53 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 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 H490 across 55 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H490 across 58 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 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.
- widow
Word origin
n.f. widow (Mish. id., Assyrian almattu Dl in ZimBP 114)—א׳ Gn 38:11 +; no cstr.; pl. אַלְמָנוֹת Ex 22:23 +; pl. sf. אַלְמְנֹתָיו Jb 27:15, etc.—widow 1 K 17:20; אִשָּׁה אַ׳ 2 S 14:5 (‖ וַיָּ֫מָת אִישִׁי) 1 K 7:14; 11:26; 17:9, 10; Gn 38:11 (J; living in father’s house) cf. Lv 22:13 (H; ‖ גְּרוּשָׁה); 21:14 (H), where widow forbidden as wife of h. p., like גְּרוּשָׁה, חֲלָלָה, זֹנָה cf. Ez 44:22(×3) (id. of all priests, except widow of priest); Nu 30:10 (P; of widow’s vow, ‖ גְּרוּשָׁה); נְשֵׁיכֶם אַלְמָנוֹת = ye shall be slain Ex 22:23 (‖ בְּנֵיכֶם יְתֹמִים) cf. ψ 109:9 Je 15:8; 18:21 Ez 22:25, also La 5:3 (sim.); of those snatched away by pestilence אַלְמְנוֹתָיו לֹא תִבְכֶּינָה Jb 27:15; by sword, id., ψ 78:64; 𝔊 We read אַלְמָנוֹת חַיּוֹת 2 S 20:3 (v. אַלְמָנוּת infr.) of imprisoned concubines; fig. of Jerusalem La 1:1; Babylon Is 47:8; especially widow as helpless, exposed to oppression & harsh treatment (often ‖ יָתוֹם, & גֵּר); Is 1:23; 10:2 Jb 22:9; 24:3; 31:16 ψ 94:6 Mal 3:5; harshness forbidden, & care for them enjoined Ex 22:21 (E) Dt 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 19, 20, 21; 26:12, 13; 27:19 Is 1:17 Je 7:6; 22:3 Zc 7:10, cf. Jb 29:13; under especially care of God Dt 10:18 Je 49:11 Pr 15:25 ψ 68:6; 146:9; once of severity of judgment in not sparing widow Is 9:16. (אַל׳ Is 13:22 vid. sub אַרְמוֹן; Ez 19:7 vid. ib.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אלמן (ʼalmân) (H488) — widowed.
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.
אַלְמָנָה
- v. אַלְמוֹן) widow. Keth. I, 1; 2, v. אֵרוּסִין. Kidd. 75ᵃ אַלְמָנַת עיסה the widow of one of spurious descent; v. עִיסָה; a. fr. Trnsf. דלת א׳ a frameless door (or made of one piece). Erub. 101ᵃ; v. גַּשְׁמָה.—Denom.
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 35 distinct written forms H490 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 H490, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 52 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 54 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 38:11
- Exodus 22:22
- Leviticus 21:14
- Numbers 30:9
- Deuteronomy 10:18
- 2 Samuel 14:5
- 1 Kings 7:14
- Job 22:9
- Psalms 68:5
- Proverbs 15:25
- Isaiah 1:17
- Jeremiah 7:6
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.
