נֶ֫גֶף
blow
also: striking, plague 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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5063 appears in the Book of Numbers — 3 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.
Numbers
- Numbers 8:19 נֶ֔גֶף n c ms I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the service of the children of Israel in the Tent of Meeting, and to make atonement for the children of Israel; that there be no plague among the children of Israel, when the children of Israel come near to the sanctuary."
- Numbers 16:46 הַ/נָּֽגֶף ptcl def.art + n c ms Moses said to Aaron, Take your censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and lay incense thereon, and carry it quickly to the congregation, and make atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from Yahweh; the plague is begun.
- Numbers 16:47 הַ/נֶּ֖גֶף ptcl def.art + n c ms Aaron took as Moses spoke, and ran into the midst of the assembly; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: and he put on the incense, and made atonement for the people.
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.
נגף (negeph) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “blow.” Debuting at Exodus 12:13, it then recurs through the corpus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 7 verses — uncommon. Numbers dominates its distribution — 3 of 7 verses. It also covers “striking” and “plague”, alongside “blow” — see its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5063 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 71%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 29%
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: Be no plague 2×
- American Standard Version: Although there came a plague 1×, And 1×, Be no plague 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Plague 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Plague 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5063 across 7 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5063 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5063 across 7 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5063 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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. fatal blow, plague, Ex 12:13 (death of first-born); 30:12; Nu 8:19 (indef.); = pestilence Nu 17:11, 12; Jos 22:17. e.g. Exodus 12:13
- 2. striking, אֶבֶן נ׳ Is 8:14 i.e. against which the foot strikes and so stumbles (‖ צוּר מִכְשׁוֹל). e.g. Isaiah 8:14
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. Ex 12:13 blow, striking (as judgment, only P);—נ׳ abs. Ex 12:13 + 6 times;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נגף (nâgaph) (H5062) — to strike.
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.
נָגַף
- (b. h.) to strike, push; to injure. Tosef. B. Kam. I, 9 נגח נ׳ וכ׳ if he gored, pushed, bit &c. Num. R. s. 5 ונ׳ הקב"ה עושי וכ׳ and the Lord struck those who made the golden calf; a. fr.—Part. pass. נָגוּף; pl. נְגוּפִים. Midr. Till. to Ps. CXVIII, 23 כשיראו … אינן אלו הנ׳ וכ׳ when the nations shall see Israel in prosperity, they shall say, these are not the stricken, these are not the rejected &c.
- to be stricken. Yoma 19ᵇ
- to strike against. Lam. R. introd. (R. Joḥ. 2) לכשיִתְנַגְּפוּ רגליכם וכ׳ when your feet shall strike against the mountains &c. (fr. Jer. XIII, 16). e.g. Jeremiah 13:16
נְגַף
- Targ. Ps. LXXXIX, 24. Targ. Ex. XXI, 35; a. e.
- same. Part. pass. מְנַגַּף bruised, wounded. Yoma 53ᵃ עד דמְנַגְּפַן כרעיה וכ׳ (some ed. דמִינַּגְּפַן Ithpa.; Ms. M. a. Ar. דהוה מנקפן, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) until his feet were bruised (bleeding) &c.
- to strike against, be bruised. Targ. Jer. XIII, 16.—Yoma l. c., v. supra.
נֶגֶף
- preced.) plague. Ex. R. s. 15 מצרים … לברוח מן הנ׳ וכ׳ the Egyptians went around seeking a way how to flee from the plague; 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 H5063 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/נֶּ֖גֶף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Joshua 22:17 | 2 |
| הַ/נָּֽגֶף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 16:46 | 1 |
| נֶ֔גֶף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 8:19 | 1 |
| נֶ֖גֶף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 30:12 | 1 |
| נֶ֠גֶף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 8:14 | 1 |
| נֶ֨גֶף֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 12:13 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5063, 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 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
