נָדַף
to drive
also: drive away, drive asunder fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
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”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5086 appears in the Book of Job — 2 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.
Job
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 verb נדף centers on the idea of “to drive.” Its earliest occurrence is Leviticus 26:36. Spanning 8 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Job dominates its distribution — 2 of 8 verses. Across 2 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Niphal). For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5086 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 63%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 25%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 13%
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 driven away 1×, Drive them away 1×, Driven 1×
- American Standard Version: Driven 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Windblown 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Driven 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5086 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5086 across 9 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5086 across 9 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5086 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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.
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.
Qal
- Impf. sf. יִדְּפֶנּוּ Jb 32:13 (juss.); 3 fs. sf. תִּדְּפֶנּוּ ψ 1:4; 2 ms. תִּנְדֹּף ψ 68:3;—drive about, chaff, subj. wind ψ 1:4; wicked, subj. God 68:3 (כְּהִנְדֹּף עָשָׁן, v. infr.); cf. Jb 32:13 (= defeat, anguish). e.g. Job 32:13
Niphal
- Pf. נִדַּף Is 19:7; Inf. כְּהִנְדֹּף ψ 68:3 (v Köi. 306 f.); Pt. נִדָּף Lv 26:36 + 3 times;—be driven, driven about (especially by wind) ψ 68:3, v. supr. (like a driving [Che drift] of smoke); of breath (הֶבֶל) fig. of deceitful gain Pr 21:6 (𝔊 Hi Ew רֹדֵף; v. De Now); of withered plant Is 19:7 (where subj. עָרוֹת, מִזְרָע i.e. place; whence Che trans. נ׳ vanish; but ref. prob. to plant-life in these places, v. Di); of leaf Lv 26:36 (as making slight sound), Jb 13:25 (fig. of sufferer, ‖ קַשׁ יָבֵשׁ), of chaff (קַשׁ) Is 41:2 (sim. of bow of hostile kings ‖ עָפָר). e.g. Isaiah 19:7
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
vb. drive, drive asunder (NH id., spread, be diffused, disseminated (of odour); Arabic نَدَفَ strike, beat, especially bow-string with mallet, to clean cotton; also play the lyre; Aramaic נְדַף = NH; Ethiopic ነደፈ throw, hurl);—
— 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.
נָדַף
- [to drive, scatter,] (neut. verb) to spread (of odors). Gen. R. s. 39, beg. היה ריחו נוֹדֵף its perfume went forth. Ber. 51ᵃ מי שאכל שום וריחו נודף … נודף יותר Ms. M., shall he who has eaten garlic so that his breath smells, eat again, that his breath may smell still more?, i.e. having done one wrong, shall one do another wrong?; a. fr.
נְדַף
- ch. same; part. נְדִיף. Targ. Cant. IV, 10. Targ. Y. Ex. XL, 5 (ed. Vien. נָדִיף).
- it blows. Ab. Zar. 55ᵃ כי מִנְּדִיף בעלמא ולא אתי מיטרא Ms. M., when a wind blows in the world and no rain comes, (v. גזף).
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 9 distinct written forms H5086 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִדְּפֶ֣/נּוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 32:13 | 1 |
| כְּ/הִנְדֹּ֥ף | Verb, Niphal, Infinitive Construct | Psalms 68:2 | 1 |
| נִ֝דָּ֗ף | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 21:6 | 1 |
| נִדַּ֖ף | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 19:7 | 1 |
| נִדָּ֔ף | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 26:36 | 1 |
| נִדָּ֖ף | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 41:2 | 1 |
| נִדָּ֣ף | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 13:25 | 1 |
| תִּ֫נְדֹּ֥ף | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 68:2 | 1 |
| תִּדְּפֶ֥/נּוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Psalms 1:4 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
