נָגַח
to gore
‘to gore’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘gore’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
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”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 4 times (36%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5055 appears — 10 distinct verses across 7 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 3 verses
- Exodus 21:28 יִגַּ֨ח Qal impf 3ms "If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the bull shall not be held responsible.
- Exodus 21:31 יִגָּ֖ח יִגָּ֑ח Qal impf 3ms Qal impf 3ms Whether it has gored a son or has gored a daughter, according to this judgment it shall be done to him.
- Exodus 21:32 יִגַּ֥ח Qal impf 3ms If the bull gores a man-servant or a maid-servant, thirty shekels of silver shall be given to their master, and the ox shall be stoned.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Daniel 2 verses
- Daniel 8:4 מְנַגֵּחַ֩ Piel ptcp.act ms I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; and no animals could stand before him, neither was there any who could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and magnified himself.
- Daniel 11:40 יִתְנַגַּ֤ח Hithpael impf 3ms At the time of the end shall the king of the south contend with him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through.
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.
נגח — transliterated nâgach — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to gore.” Debuting at Exodus 21:28, it then recurs through the corpus. With 10 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Exodus (30% of all occurrences). As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Piel, and more). See the sense tree, 10-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5055 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 3 verses 30%
- Daniel 2 verses 20%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 10%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 40%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 20%
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: Gore 1×, Have gored 1×, He shall push 1×
- American Standard Version: Gore 2×, Shalt thou push 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Gores 3×, You shall gore 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Gores 3×, You will gore 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5055 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5055 across 11 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5055 across 10 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5055 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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
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. This entry also uses Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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 3 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.
Qal
- gore
Piel
- . push or thrust at
Hithpael
- . engage in thrusting with, wage war with
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
נָגַח vb. push, thrust, gore
— 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.
נָגַח
- (b. h.) to break forth (v. גִּיחַ); to gore, butt, fight. B. Kam. V, 1 שור שנ׳ וכ׳ if an ox gored a cow, and her embryo is found (dead) by her side. Ib. אם עד שלא נְגָחָהּ וכ׳ whether she gave birth before he gored her. Tosef. ib. IV, 6 עד שיתכוין לִיגַּח unless he pushes intentionally. Ib. 10 יש בנוֹגֵחַ וכ׳ there are laws concerning the butter (that killed a person) which do not apply &c.; a. v. fr.—[Gen. R. s. 32, end נוגח דם some ed., read: גּוֹנֵחַ.]
- same. Ḥull. 51ᵃ זכרים המְנַגְּחִין וכ׳ rams that butt one another. Ex. R. s. 41, end אתמול מְנַגֵּחַ בהם וכ׳ yesterday he (Moses) pushed them (the angels of destruction) away, and now he is afraid of them. Tanḥ. Balak 3; Num. R. s. 20, beg. מה שור מנ׳ … מְנַגְּחִים וכ׳ as the ox fights with his horns, so do the Israelites fight (their enemies) with their prayers. Ber. 56ᵇ נְגָחוֹ … שמְנַגְּחִין בתורה if (in his dream) an ox attacked him, he will have children who fight in (discussing) the Law; a. fr.—Part. pass. מְנוּגָּח. Tosef. B. Kam. III, 6 אפי׳ זה מנ׳ even if the one is found gored.
- to stir up to fighting. B. Kam. IV, 4 כי יִגַּח שלא שיַגִּיחוּהוּ ‘if he butt’ (Ex. XXI, 28), but not when they stir him up (in the arena). e.g. Exodus 21:28
- to fight with one another. Tanḥ. Vayigg. 4 שור וארי מִתְנַגְּחִין וכ׳ ox and lion fighting with each other; a. e.
נְגַח
- Targ. O. Ex. XXI, 28 (ed. Vien. יַגַּח Af.).—B. Kam. 47ᵃ כי נַגְחָהּ at the time he gored her; a. e.—נ׳ קרבא to wage war. Targ. Y. Gen. XXI, 10 (v. גִּיחַ).—Part. pass. נְגִיחַ breaking through, flowing over. B. Bath. 68ᵇ דנ׳ קאיהו לגיו Ms. M. (ed. קאיהי; Rashb. דנגח; Ms. F. a. R. דנגחקייהו in one w., Ar. דנגהק׳, corr. acc.) when their outlet runs inside of the township (v. קָאיָיא, cmp. גִּיהָא).—Trnsf. enough (cmp. דַּי). M. Kat. 16ᵇ לא … בתיגריה נְגִיחָא לך ed. Ven. (v. Rashi a. l.) have you not enough (that I escorted you thus far)? attend now to your business yourself; v. נְגַהּ.
- same. Targ. Ps. XLIV, 6; a. e.—B. Kam. 21ᵃ; Sot. 48ᵃ מְנַגַּח כי תורא he butts like an ox.
- same. Tosef. Sot. XIII, 5, a. e. לאַגָּחָא קרבא to wage war. Nidd. 65ᵇ דמַגְּחֵי וכ׳ Var., v. גִּיחַ a. נְגַהּ.
נַגַּח
- (preced.) wont to gore, a butter. Targ. O. Ex. XXI, 29; 36 (some ed. נַגָּח).
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 10 distinct written forms H5055 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5055, 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 → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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
- Exodus 21:28
- Deuteronomy 33:17
- 1 Kings 22:11
- 2 Chronicles 18:10
- Psalms 44:5
- Ezekiel 34:21
- Daniel 8:4
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.
