נְאֻם
utterance
‘utterance’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
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).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5002 appears in the Book of Zephaniah — 5 distinct verses. 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.
Zephaniah
- Zephaniah 1:2 נְאֻם n c ms cs I will utterly sweep away everything off of the surface of the earth, says Yahweh.
- Zephaniah 1:3 נְאֻם n c ms cs I will sweep away man and animal. I will sweep away the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea, and the heaps of rubble with the wicked. I will cut off man from the surface of the earth, says Yahweh.
- Zephaniah 1:10 נְאֻם n c ms cs In that day, says Yahweh, there will be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, a wailing from the second quarter, and a great crashing from the hills.
- Zephaniah 2:9 נְאֻם֩ n c ms cs Therefore as I live, says Yahweh of Hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab will be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, a possession of nettles, and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The remnant of my people will plunder them, and the survivors of my nation will inherit them.
- Zephaniah 3:8 נְאֻם n c ms cs "Therefore wait for me," says Yahweh, "until the day that I rise up to the prey, for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour on them my indignation, even all my fierce anger, for all the earth will be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.
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, נאם (nᵉʼum) means “utterance.” Where the King James Version says “saith,” newer translations reach for “declares” (Berean Standard Bible) and “declaration of” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 358 verses across 21 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its common vocabulary. The word gravitates to Jeremiah (47%), then Ezekiel and Isaiah. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Dig into 358-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5002 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 →
- 358
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 358 distinct verses.
- 21 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 21 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #134
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 134 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 358 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 358 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 348 verses · 97%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 2%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 1%
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: Saith 299×, Thee saith 11×, You saith 11×
- American Standard Version: Saith 236×, Me 23×, Them 12×
- Berean Standard Bible: Declares 362×, Prophecy 6×, Oracle 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Declaration of 172×, Declaration 103×, Is 14×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5002 across 376 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 27 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 H5002 across 376 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 H5002 across 376 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 H5002 across 307 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 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.
- 1. utterance, declaration, revelation, of prophet in ecstatic state נ׳ בלעם Nu 24:3, 15; נ׳ שֹׁמֵעַ אִמְרֵי אֵל v 4, 16; נ׳ הַגֶּבֶר v 3, 15 2 S 23:1 Pr 30:1; נ׳ דוד 2 S 23:1; נ׳ פֶּשַׁע ψ 36:2 (transgression personified, speaking with proph. voice בְּקֶרֶב לִבּוֹ); elsewhere always e.g. Numbers 24:3
- 2. before divine names (except Je 23:31 see vb.): נ׳ יהוה utterance, declaration of י׳ (prophet citing divine word given through him), Gn 22:16 (J), Nu 14:28 (P), 2 K 9:26(×2); 19:33 = Is 37:34, 2 K 22:19 = 2 Ch 34:27, Is 14:22; 30:1; 31:9 Ez 13:6, 7; 16:58; 37:14 Ho 2:15, 18, 23; 11:11 Jo 2:12 Ob 4; 8 Mi 4:6; 5:9 Zp 1:2, 3, 10; 3:8 Zc 8:17; 10:12; 11:6; 12:1, 4; 13:8 Mal 1:2 + Is 2 12 times, Je 162 times, Am 14 times, Hg 5 times, Zc 1 (1–8) 6 times; sq. אלהי ישׂראל 1 S 2:30 Is 17:6; י׳ אֱלֹהֵי (הַ)צְבָאוֹת Am 6:8, 14; נ׳ י׳ צְבָאוֹת Is 14:22, 23; 17:3; 22:25 Je 8:3; 25:29; 30:8; 49:26 Na 2:14; 3:5 Zc 13:2, 7 + Hg 5 times, Zc 1 (1–8) 7 times; sq. אלהי ישׂראל Zp 2:9; האדון י׳ צ׳ Is 1:24; 19:4; אֲדֹנָי י׳ אֶלֹהֵי הַצּ׳ Am 3:13; אדני י׳ צ׳ Is 3:15 Je 49:5; הַמֶּלֶךְ י׳ צ׳ 46:18; 48:15; 51:57; נ׳ אדני יהוה Is 56:8 Je 2:22 Am 4:5; 8:3, 9, 11 + Ez 82 times נְאֻם begins sentence only Is 56:8 ψ 110:1; often in middle Is 49:18 Am 3:10 +; most frequently at end Is 54:17 Am 2:11; 4:3 +; found in all proph. except Hab., Jon.; not in H D of Hex, Chr (except ‖ Kings), Dan., Job or the five Megilloth. e.g. Jeremiah 23:31
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
n.m. utterance (BaNB 82 e KöLgb ii. 501 > older expl. as Pt. pass.);—נ׳ always thus, as cstr.:—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נאם (nâʼam) (H5001) — to prophesy.
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.
נָאַם
- to speak, v. נוּם.
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 H5002 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 317 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 358 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 22:16
- Numbers 14:28
- 1 Samuel 2:30
- 2 Samuel 23:1
- 2 Kings 9:26
- 2 Chronicles 34:27
- Psalms 36:1
- Proverbs 30:1
- Isaiah 1:24
- Jeremiah 1:8
- Ezekiel 5:11
- Hosea 2:13
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.
