נוּן
Nun
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Nun’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H5126 appears in the Book of Numbers — 11 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 11:28 נ֗וּן n Proper Joshua the son of Nun, the minister of Moses, one of his chosen men, answered, My lord Moses, forbid them.
- Numbers 13:8 נֽוּן n Proper Of the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun.
- Numbers 13:16 נ֖וּן n Proper These are the names of the men who Moses sent to spy out the land. Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun Joshua.
- Numbers 14:6 נ֗וּן n Proper Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were of those who spied out the land, tore their clothes:
- Numbers 14:30 נֽוּן n Proper surely you shall not come into the land, concerning which I swore that I would make you dwell therein, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.
- Numbers 14:38 נ֔וּן n Proper But Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, remained alive of those men who went to spy out the land.
- Numbers 26:65 נֽוּן n Proper For Yahweh had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. There was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.
- Numbers 27:18 נ֔וּן n Proper Yahweh said to Moses, Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him;
- Numbers 32:12 נ֑וּן n Proper save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun; because they have wholly followed Yahweh.
- Numbers 32:28 נ֑וּן n Proper So Moses gave charge concerning them to Eleazar the priest, and to Joshua the son of Nun, and to the heads of the fathers' [houses] of the tribes of the children of Israel.
- Numbers 34:17 נֽוּן n Proper These are the names of the men who shall divide the land to you for inheritance: Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun.
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, נון (Nûwn) means “Nun.” Scripture first uses it in Exodus 33:11. Spanning 30 verses in 8 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Numbers (37% of all occurrences). Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5126 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 →
- 30
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 30 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,139
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,139 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 30 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 11 verses 37%
- Joshua 10 verses 33%
- Deuteronomy 4 verses 13%
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 30 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 16 verses · 53%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 12 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 7%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Nun 29×
- American Standard Version†: Nun 30×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Nun 30×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Nun 29×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5126 across 30† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5126 across 30† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5126 across 30† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5126 across 30† 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
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.
נון I opagate, increase (si vera l.) (> denom. from נין Hup-Now SS
Qal
- (or Hiph.?) Impf. ינין Kt; >
Niphal
- ינּוֹן Qr ψ 72:17 let his name have increase (or, if Niph., be propagated, spread); but dub., Vrss perhaps יִכּוֹן be established, endure. e.g. Psalms 72:17
נון II and (1 Ch 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
I. vb. propagate, increase (si vera l.) (> denom. from נין Hup-Now SS;—NH נוּן = fish, so Aramaic נוּנָא, ܢܽܘܢܳܐ, Assyrian nûnu);—
II. and (1 Ch 7:27) נוֹן n.pr.m. father of Joshua 1 Ch 7:27; elsewhere always בִּן־נוּן(יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) Ex 33:11 Nu 11:28; 13:8, 16 + 22 times Nu Dt Jos (JEDP); also Ju 2:8 1 K 16:34 Ne 8:17; 𝔊 Ναυη (for Ναυν by error, cf. Thes).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נון (nûwn) (H5125) — to increase.
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.
נוּן
- (contr. of נענע, v. letter ו; cmp. זִיז = זוזו) fish. Targ. Jon. II, 1; a. e.—Targ. Lev. XI, 17; Deut. XIV, 17 שלי נונא, v. שָׁלֵינוּנָא.—Ned. 54ᵇ נו"ן סמ"ך עי"ן נ׳ סמא לעינים the succession of the letters Nun, Samekh, ʿAyin serves as an intimation, ‘fish is a remedy for the eyes’. Gen. R. s. 11; a. fr.—Ab. Zar. 39ᵃ שפר נ׳ (καλλίχθος) sh’far nuna, name of a fish of the genus anthias; קדש נ׳ (ἱερὸς ἰχθύς) K’dash nuna, a name for anthias, called by some קבר נ׳ (Ar. קברנונא, in one w.) Ḳ’bar nuna (Grave-fish); [for corr. vers., v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 70, a. Tosaf. a. l.]. Ib. לשפרנונא (Ms. M. in two words).—Pl. נוּנִין, נוּנַיָּא, נוּנַיָּיה, נוּנֵי Targ. Deut. IV, 18; a. fr.—Y. Naz. IX, 57ᵈ, v. צְלֵי I.—Y. Ned. IV, beg. 39ᶜ, v. חל; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 14:17
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 H5126 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| נֽוּן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 32:44 | 6 |
| נ֗וּן | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 31:23 | 5 |
| נ֑וּן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 2:23 | 4 |
| נ֔וּן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 1:1 | 4 |
| נ֖וּן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 19:49 | 4 |
| נוּן֙ | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 1:38 | 3 |
| נ֟וּן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 19:51 | 1 |
| נ֠וּן | Noun, Proper | Joshua 2:1 | 1 |
| נ֥וֹן | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 7:27 | 1 |
| נ֥וּן | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 8:17 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5126, 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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Nun). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Beyond the fact that he was the father of Joshua nothing more is known of him (Ex. 33:11).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(fish, or posterity), the father of the Jewish captain Joshua. (Exodus 33:11) etc. His genealogical descent from Ephraim is recorded in (1 Chronicles 7:1) ... (B.C. before 1530.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
same as Non
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 29 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 30 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.
