נְדָבָה
freewill offering
‘freewill offering’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
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).
1 verse where H5071 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of 2 Chronicles. 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.
2 Chronicles
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.
נדבה (nᵉdâbâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “freewill offering.” Scripture first uses it in Exodus 35:29. Spanning 25 verses in 10 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. Sharing its root, it stands alongside נדב, נדב and נדיב. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5071 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 →
- 25
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 25 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,251
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,251 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 25 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Leviticus 5 verses 20%
- Deuteronomy 4 verses 16%
- Psalms 4 verses 16%
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 25 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 13 verses · 52%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 9 verses · 36%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 12%
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: Freewill offering 4×, Freewill offerings 3×, Free offerings 2×
- American Standard Version: Freewill-offering 8×, Freewill-offerings 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Freewill offering 9×, Freewill offerings 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Freewill offering 10×, Freewill offerings 6×, Free will offering 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5071 across 26 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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 H5071 across 26 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H5071 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H5071 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 5 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. voluntariness אֹהֲבֵם נְדָבָה Ho 14:5 I (י׳) will love them freely; עַמְּךָ נְדָבֹת בְּיוֹם חֵילֶ֑ךָ ψ 110:3 thy people will be (all) voluntariness in the day of thy host (be ready to volunteer, v. BrMP 133); גֶּשֶׁם נדבות 68:10 generous (copious) rain; בנדבה 54:7 voluntarily, and adverb. acc. נדבה Dt 23:24 (v. Dr). e.g. Hosea 14:5
- 2. freewill, voluntary, offering:
- a. incl. gifts used in erection and furnishing of tabernacle Ex 35:29; 36:3 (P); for first temple 2 Ch 31:14, second Ezr 1:4; 8:28. e.g. Exodus 35:29
- b. incl. עולה and שׁלמים Ez 46:12(×2); prob. also Am. 4:5, נדבות פִי ψ 119:108. e.g. Ezekiel 46:12
- c. usually a זֶבַח for festival meals, at Passover 2 Ch 35:8, Pentecost Dt 16:10, Tabernacles Ezr 3:5 (besides the ritual offerings); disting. from נֶדֶר votive offering Lv 7:16 Nu 15:3; 29:39 (P), Lv 22:18, 21, 23; 23:38 (H), Dt 12:6, 17.—(Verbs used are הביא נ׳ Ex 35:29; 36:3; הקריב נ׳ Lv 22:18; עשׂה נ׳ Nu 15:3 Ez 46:12; נתן נ׳ Lv 23:38 Dt 16:10.) e.g. 2 Chronicles 35:8
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.f. voluntariness, freewill-offering;—abs. נ׳ Ex 35:29 + 14 times; cstr. נִדְבַת Dt 16:10; pl. נְדָבוֹת Am 4:5 ψ 68:10; נְדָבֹת 110:3; cstr. נִדְבוֹת 119:108 2 Ch 31:14; sf. נִדְבֹתֶ֫יךָ Dt 12:17 + 4 times sfs.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נדב (nâdab) (H5068) — to incite.
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.
נְדָבָה
- preced.) free-will offering, donation. Kinn. I, 1 איזהו נדר … ואיזהו נ׳ וכ׳ a vow is called neder, when one says, I vow to dedicate a burnt-offering; ni’dabah, when one says, this animal is to be a burnt-offering. Ib. 3 בחובה ובנ׳ when an obligatory and a free-will sacrifice are mixed up. Men. I, 1 מנחת נ׳, opp. to מנחת חוטא. Ib. 2ᵃ יהא נ׳ it will be a free-will offering (and the vow itself is not yet fulfilled); opp. יהא נדר it will be the fulfillment of his vow; a. fr.—Pl. נְדָבוֹת. Kinn. I, 1. Ned. I, 1 כנִדְבוֹתָם like their (the good men’s) free-will offerings or vows; a. fr.
נִדְבָּה
- Nidbah. Y. Meg. I, 71ᶜ (twice) אשיין בר נ׳; Men. 29ᵃ אשיאן בר נדבך (Ms. M. נדבר).
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 22 distinct written forms H5071 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 H5071, 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
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 7 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 24 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 25 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 35:29
- Leviticus 7:16
- Numbers 15:3
- Deuteronomy 12:6
- 2 Chronicles 31:14
- Ezra 1:4
- Psalms 54:6
- Ezekiel 46:12
- Hosea 14:4
- Amos 4:5
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.
