נָזַר
to consecrate
‘to consecrate’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Infinitive Absolute 1 time (10%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 10 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5144 appears — 10 distinct verses across 5 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.
Leviticus 2 verses
- Leviticus 15:31 וְ/הִזַּרְתֶּ֥ם conj + Hiphil wpf 2mp "'Thus you shall separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, so they will not die in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in their midst.'"
- Leviticus 22:2 וְ/יִנָּֽזְרוּ֙ conj + Niphal impf 3mp "Tell Aaron and his sons to separate themselves from the holy things of the children of Israel, which they make holy to me, and that they not profane my holy name. I am Yahweh.
Numbers 5 verses
- Numbers 6:2 לְ/הַזִּ֖יר prep + Hiphil inf.cs "Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them: When either man or woman shall make a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to Yahweh,
- Numbers 6:3 יַזִּ֔יר Hiphil impf 3ms he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of fermented drink, neither shall he drink any juice of grapes, nor eat fresh grapes or dried.
- Numbers 6:5 יַזִּ֤יר Hiphil impf 3ms "All the days of his vow of separation there shall no razor come on his head, until the days are fulfilled, in which he separates himself to Yahweh. He shall be holy. He shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow long.
- Numbers 6:6 הַזִּיר֖/וֹ Hiphil inf.cs + sfx pers 3ms "All the days that he separates himself to Yahweh he shall not go near a dead body.
- Numbers 6:12 וְ/הִזִּ֤יר conj + Hiphil wpf 3ms He shall separate to Yahweh the days of his separation, and shall bring a male lamb a year old for a trespass offering; but the former days shall be void, because his separation was defiled.
Ezekiel 1 verse
Hosea 1 verse
Zechariah 1 verse
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, נזר (nâzar) means “to consecrate.” Its uses cluster heavily in Numbers (50% of all occurrences). Spanning 10 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Leviticus 15:31. The verb spans 2 stems, from Niphal to Hiphil. 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 H5144 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 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 10 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 70%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 30%
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†: He separateth 2×
- American Standard Version†: He separateth 2×, He shall separate 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Separation 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: He shall make separate 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5144 across 10† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5144 across 10† 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 H5144 across 10† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5144 across 10† 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 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.
נזר I dedicate, consecrate, separate
Niphal
- . devote, dedicate oneself unto
Hiphil
- . and ye shale keep the sons of Isr. sacredly separate from their uncleanness
נזר II be a Nazarite, live as a Nazarite
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
[ נָזַר ] vb. dedicate, consecrate, separate, in relig. and ceremonial sense
[ נָזַר ] vb. denom. Hiph. be a Nazarite, live as a Nazarite;—only Nu 6 in law of Naz.
— 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.
זָרַר
- v. זוּר a.
- 1. to press, stamp;
- 2. to scatter.
- to be scattered. Pesik. Vayhi, p. 64ᵇ היתה נדקת … ונִזֶּרֶת was crushed, ground, and scattered; Pesik. R. s. 17; Yalk. Ex. 186; Mekh. Bo s. 13 וכִזָּרוֹת … (pl.).
- to be smashed. Part. מוּזָר, fem. מוּזֶרֶת, pl. מוּזָרוֹת. ביצה מ׳ an egg smashed in the nest, rotten (cmp. מָאַס). Snh. 82ᵇ; Tanḥ. Pinḥ. 2; a. e., v. זָמַר III.—Nidd. 35ᵇ. Ḥull. XII, 3.
נָזַר
- 1. to surround; to keep off; to set apart. V. נָזִיר, נֵזֶר.
- 2. (denom. of נָזִיר) to vow to be a Nazarite;to dedicate one’s self to nazariteship. Naz. III, 2 שנ׳ שתי וכ׳ who vows to be a Nazarite for two terms. Ib. 5 מי שנ׳ והוא וכ׳ if one makes the vow while in a burial ground. Ib. 17ᵃ לא תִינְזוֹר thou must not vow (while in a burial ground). Ib. I, 5 אחת גדולה נָזַרְתִּי I meant by my vow one nazaritic term which I consider a long one. Ned. 3ᵇ נימא קרא לִיזּוֹר the text (Num. VI, 2) ought to read lizzor (instead of l’hazzir). Y. Naz. I, beg. 51ᵃ במתכוין לִיזּוֹר when he intended to vow nazariteship; a. fr. e.g. Numbers 6:2
- 1. (sub. (sub. נפשו) to abstain. Ned. 4ᵃ עד שיַזִּיר מכולן (Naz. 3ᵇ שיִדּוֹר) unless he vows abstinence from all of them (mentioned Num. VI, 3). e.g. Numbers 6:3
- 2. to impose the vow of abstinence. Sifré Num. 22 להַזִּיר אף את אחרים l’hazzir (Num. VI, 2) includes also the imposition of nazariteship on others (one’s son &c.). Ib. את עצמו מַזִּיר וכ׳ himself he may obligate, but he cannot obligate others; Num. R. s. 10; a. e. e.g. Numbers 6:2
- 3. to be a Nazarite. Naz. 19ᵃ אע"פ שלא הביא ה׳ even if he did not bring the due sacrifice, he must resume his nazariteship. Ib. אימתי ה׳ וכ׳ when can he resume &c.? After he brought the sacrifice (Num. VI, 12). e.g. Numbers 6:12
- 1. (with (with ל) to dedicate one’s self to. Sifré l. c. המצוה להִנָּזֵר לשם the merit of nazariteship consists in the dedication of one’s self to the Lord (in the sacred motive).
- 2. (with מ) to abstain from; to renounce. Ib. 131 הִנָּזֵר מתורתו … והוא נִזּוֹר renounce the law of Moses, and he did renounce; Y. Snh. X, 28ᵈ הִינָּזֵר.
נְזַר
- , to abstain; to vow, observe nazariteship. Targ. O. Num. VI, 3 יִזַּר (ed. Berl. יַזַּר Af.; Y. II יִתְנְזַר Ithpe.). Targ. O. ib. 5 דִּנְזִיר ed. Berl. (Var. דִּנְזַר, דְּיַנְזַר, v. Berl. Targ. O. II, p. 40).
- , אַנְזַר same. Ib. 12; v. supra.
- to abstain, v. supra.
נֵזֶר
- preced.)
- 1. crown, esp. the Nazarite’s hair. Num. R. s. 10 (ref. to Num. VI, 7) קראו הכתוב עטרה לראשו the text calls it (his long hair which defaces him) a crown on his head. Ib. נִזְרוֹ כקרבן his hair is as sacred as the sacrifice; a. fr. e.g. Numbers 6:7
- 2. = נְזִירוּת, the Nazarite’s vow. Num. R. l. c.; Tosef. Naz. II, 6 (ref. to Num. VI, 21) ולא נ׳ על קרבנו but not the vow to follow the dedication of his sacrifice; Y. ib. II, 52ᵇ top שיקדום נזרו וכ׳ his vow must precede the dedication of his sacrifice &c. Ib. V, 54ᵃ גילגל בנזרו he turned around (trifled with) his vow. Ned. 90ᵃ נשאל על נזרו, v. שָׁאַל; a. fr. e.g. Numbers 6:21
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 H5144 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הִנָּזֵ֕ר | Verb, Niphal, Infinitive Absolute | Zechariah 7:3 | 1 |
| הַזִּיר֖/וֹ | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Numbers 6:6 | 1 |
| וְ/הִזִּ֤יר | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 6:12 | 1 |
| וְ/הִזַּרְתֶּ֥ם | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Leviticus 15:31 | 1 |
| וְ/יִנָּֽזְרוּ֙ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Leviticus 22:2 | 1 |
| וְ/יִנָּזֵ֣ר | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 14:7 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּנָּֽזְרוּ֙ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Hosea 9:10 | 1 |
| יַזִּ֔יר | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 6:3 | 1 |
| יַזִּ֤יר | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 6:5 | 1 |
| לְ/הַזִּ֖יר | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Numbers 6:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5144, 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
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 5 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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.
