נָחָה
to lead
‘to lead’ 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 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”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 verse where H5148 appears in the Qal stem in the Book of Genesis. 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.
Genesis
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, נחה (nâchâh) means “to lead.” The King James Version usually renders it “lead,” while modern versions prefer “lead me” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 39 verses in 12 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Psalms (46% of all occurrences). The verb spans 2 stems, from Qal to Hiphil. Dig into 39-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5148 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #922
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 922 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 39 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 39 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 26 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 8 verses · 21%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 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: Lead 9×, He led 2×, Shall guide 2×
- American Standard Version: Lead 8×, Hath led 2×, He led 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Lead me 7×, He led them 2×, Lead 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He led them 3×, Lead me 3×, Lead them 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5148 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 24 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 H5148 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 23 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 H5148 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 26 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 H5148 across 45 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 25 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
- Pf. sf. נָחַ֫נִי Gn 24:27 + 2 times; וְנָֽחֲךָ Is 58:11; נָחָם Ex 13:17; 2 ms. נָחִ֫יתָ Ex 15:13 ψ 77:21; Imv. נְחֵה Ex 32:34; sf. נְחֵנִי ψ 5:9 + 2 times;—lead, bring, sq. acc. pers., subj. man Ex 32:34 (sq. אֶל־), cf. ψ 60:11; 108:11 (both sq. עַד־; ‖ הוביל); usually subj. י׳ Gn 24:27 (J; also sq. בַּדֶּרֶךְ + acc. loc.), Ex 13:17 (E; sq. דֶּרֶךְ), 15:13 (song; ‖ נהל), ψ 77:21; fig. of guidance in prosperity and righteousness ψ 5:9 (‖ הושׁר דרך), 27:11 (sq. בְּאֹרַח; ‖ הורה דרך), 139:24 (sq. בדרך עולם); cf. Is 58:11. e.g. Genesis 24:27
Hiphil
- Pf. sf. הִנְחַ֫נִי Gn 24:48; 2 ms. sf. הִנְחִתָם Ne 9:12; Impf. sf. יַנְחֵ֫נִי Nu 23:7 ψ 23:3; יַנְחֶ֫נּוּ Dt 32:12 Pr 18:16; 3 fs. תַּנְחֶה Pr 6:22, etc.; Inf. cstr. sf. לְהַנְחֹתָם Ne 9:19; לַנְחֹתָם Ex 13:21;—lead, guide (= Qal) sq. acc. pers. Nu 23:7 (JE; + מִן).—1 S 22:4 (+ אֶת־פְּנֵי), 1 K 10:26 2 K 18:11 v. sub נוח Hiph. B.—; of guiding = treating kindly (the helpless) Jb 31:18, of guiding constellations 38:32 (‖ הוציא); usually subj. י׳ Gn 24:48 (J; sq. בַּדֶּרֶךְ) Dt 32:12 ψ 78:14, 53, 72 (Isr. as flock; ‖ רעה); Is 57:18 ψ 107:30 (sq. אֶל־); cf. of pillar of cloud Ex 13:21 (J), Ne 9:12, 19; also Jb 12:23, read prob. וַיַּנִּחֵם and leaves them (Je 14:9). ψ 67:5; especially in path of blessing ψ 23:3; 31:4 (‖ נהל), 61:3 (sq. בְּ), 73:24; cf. 43:3; 139:10 (‖ אחז), 143:10 (sq. בְּ); also of instruction, etc., Pr 6:22; 11:3; 18:16 (sq. לִפְנֵי). e.g. Genesis 24:48
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. lead, guide (Arabic نَحَا go in direction of, turn (eyes) toward);—
— 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.
נָחָה I
- , v. נחי
*נָחָה II
- (נוּחַ) = הֲנָחָה, rest, relief. Gen. R. s. 10, end כיון שנחו … ניתן להם נ׳ when the hands of their Maker left off from (extending) them, they were given rest (permanency); Yalk. ib. 16 חנייה.
נחי
- to bring to rest, to lead. Ex. R. s. 20 (ref. to Ex. XIII, 17) לא נָחָם ממצרים וכ׳ he did not lead them from Egypt to Palestine by the route of eleven journeys; Tanḥ. B’shall. 1 נחם נהגם naḥam means, he led them; v. נִיחוּם. e.g. Exodus 13:17
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 35 distinct written forms H5148 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 30 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 39 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
- Genesis 24:27
- Exodus 13:17
- Numbers 23:7
- Deuteronomy 32:12
- 1 Samuel 22:4
- 1 Kings 10:26
- 2 Kings 18:11
- Job 12:23
- Psalms 5:8
- Proverbs 6:22
- Isaiah 57:18
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.
