נָזַל
to flow
also: distil, trickle, drop fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal 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: ‘flow’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
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”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
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).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 6 times (38%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 4 times (25%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Construct 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Jussive, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 16 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5140 appears — 16 distinct verses across 10 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 1 verse
Numbers 1 verse
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Judges 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 78:16 נוֹזְלִ֣ים Qal ptcp.act mp He brought streams also out of the rock, And caused waters to run down like rivers.
- Psalms 78:44 וְ֝/נֹזְלֵי/הֶ֗ם conj + Qal ptcp.act mp cs + sfx pers 3mp Turned their rivers into blood, And their streams, so that they could not drink.
- Psalms 147:18 יִזְּלוּ Qal impf 3mp He sends out his word, and melts them. He causes his wind to blow, and the waters flow.
Proverbs 1 verse
Song of Solomon 2 verses
- Song of Solomon 4:15 וְ/נֹזְלִ֖ים conj + Qal ptcp.act mp A fountain of gardens, A well of living waters, Flowing streams from Lebanon. Beloved
- Song of Solomon 4:16 יִזְּל֣וּ Qal juss 3mp Awake, north wind; and come, you south; Blow on my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, And taste his precious fruits. Lover
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 44:3 וְ/נֹזְלִ֖ים conj + Qal ptcp.act mp For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on your seed, and my blessing on your offspring:
- Isaiah 45:8 יִזְּלוּ Qal impf 3mp Distil, you heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, that it may bring forth salvation, and let it cause righteousness to spring up together; I, Yahweh, have created it.
- Isaiah 48:21 הִזִּ֣יל Hiphil pf 3ms They didn't thirst when he led them through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them; he split the rock also, and the waters gushed out.
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 9:18 יִזְּלוּ Qal impf 3mp and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.
- Jeremiah 18:14 נוֹזְלִֽים Qal ptcp.act mp Shall the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of the field? [or] shall the cold waters that flow down from afar be dried up?
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.
נזל — transliterated nâzal — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to flow.” Debuting at Exodus 15:8, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 16 verses across 10 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Across 2 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Hiphil). Related forms include מזלה. See the sense tree, 16-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5140 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 16 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Psalms 3 verses 19%
- Isaiah 3 verses 19%
- Song of Solomon 2 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 16 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 44%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 38%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 19%
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: Floods 3×, Flow 2×, Streams 2×
- American Standard Version: Flow 3×, Streams 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Currents 2×, Flow 2×, Streams 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Flow 4×, Flowing waters 2×, Let 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5140 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H5140 across 16 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5140 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H5140 across 20 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.
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 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
- 1. flow
- 2. distil
Hiphil
- . cause to flow
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
[ נָזַל ] vb. flow, trickle, drop, distil (poet.)
— 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.
נָזַל
- to run, melt, be distilled. Gen. R. s. 13 (ref. to Job XXXVI, 28) היכן הם נוֹזְלִין בשחקים where are they (the salty waters of the Ocean) distilled? In the clouds; Yalk. Gen. 20 (corr. acc.); Koh. R. to I, 7 איכן הם נעשים נוֹזְלִים בשחקים where are they made into distilled (sweet) waters? In the clouds; Yalk. Koh. 967.—Esp. נוֹזְלִים, נוֹזְלִין running waters. Mekh. B’shall., Shir., s. 6; a. e. e.g. Job 36:28
- to cause to flow; to distill. Sifré Deut. 306 (ref. to Deut. XXXII, 2) אם כנסת … לסוף שאתה מְנַזֵּל ומשקה וכ׳ if thou gatherest the words of the Law after the manner of those who collect rain water in the cistern, thou shalt finally be able to make them flow and give drink to others. B. Bath. 25ᵃ (ref. to Deut. l. c.) זה רוח צפונית שמַזֶּלֶת וכ׳ that is the nothern wind which makes the gold run (increases commerce; Rashi: makes gold cheap, v. זוּל). Cant. R. to IV, 15 (ref. to ונזלים וכ׳, ib.) זה מַזִּיל מקצת דבר וזה מזיל וכ׳ the one lets flow (utters, cmp. נָבַע) one part of the argument, and the other another part, until the halakhah shines forth like the Lebanon. e.g. Deuteronomy 32:2
נְזַל
- ; part. (or adj.) pl. נָזְלַיָּא, נוֹזְ׳ running waters, rivers; v. preced. Targ. Y. Ex. XV, 8 (O. אזליא). Targ. Ps. LXXVIII, 16; 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 13 distinct written forms H5140 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 H5140, 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 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 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 15:8
- Numbers 24:7
- Deuteronomy 32:2
- Judges 5:5
- Job 36:28
- Proverbs 5:15
- Song of Solomon 4:15
- Isaiah 44:3
- Jeremiah 9:18
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.
