נַ֫חַשׁ
divination
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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (50%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (50%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 2 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5173 appears — 2 distinct verses across 1 book. 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 2 verses
- Numbers 23:23 נַ֨חַשׁ֙ n c ms Surely there is no enchantment with Jacob; Neither is there any divination with Israel: Now shall it be said of Jacob and of Israel, What has God done!
- Numbers 24:1 נְחָשִׁ֑ים n c mp When Balaam saw that it pleased Yahweh to bless Israel, he didn't go, as at the other times, to meet with enchantments, but he set his face toward the wilderness.
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.
נחש (nachash) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “divination.” A scarce word — 2 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. It clusters heavily in Numbers, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Debuting at Numbers 23:23, it then recurs through the corpus. From the same root come נחש, נחוש and נחש. 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 H5173 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 2 verses 100%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 100%
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: Enchantments 1×, Surely there is no enchantment 1×
- American Standard Version: Enchantments 1×, Surely there is no enchantment 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Omens 1×, Spell 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Omen 1×, Omens 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5173 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5173 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5173 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5173 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- divination, enchantment
Word origin
n.[m.] divination, enchantment, only abs. נ׳ Nu 23:23 (JE; ‖ קֶסֶם), and pl. abs. נְחָשִׁים Nu 24:1 (JE), both in story of Balaam.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נחש (nâchash) (H5172) — to divine.
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.
נָחַשׁ
- to whisper.
- to divine, to make action dependent on an omen, to augur. Tosef. Sabb. VII (VIII), 13 איזהו מְנַחֵשׁ וכ׳ a diviner (under the law, Lev. XIX, 26) is he who says, ‘my staff fell out of my hand’ (it portends evil) &c.; Snh. 65ᵇ. Ib. 66ᵃ כגון אלו המְנַחֲשִׁים בחולדה וכ׳ like those who divine (evil or luck) from a weasel, birds &c. Y. Sabb. VI, end, 8ᵈ כל המנחש סופו לבוא עליו if one believes in omens, what he fears will finally befall him (with ref. to לא נחש Num. XXIII, 23, changed into לו נחש); Ned. 32ᵃ כל המנחש לו נחש for him who believes in omens, the omen exists (will be realized). Ib. כל אדם שאינו מנ׳ he who rejects divination. Mekh. B’shall. s. 2 שמא יְנַחֲשׁוּ ויחזרו וכ׳ lest they consider it a bad omen and go back. Ib. וזקני מדין נִחֲשׁוּ וכ׳ and the Midianite elders considered (Balaam’s death) a bad omen and went home; a. fr.—Sifra Vayikra, Par. 9, ch. XIII (ref. to Lev. XVIII, 3) [read:] שלא תְנַחֵשׁ thou must not augur (v. however, נָקַר II). e.g. Leviticus 19:26
נְחַשׁ I
- , Pa. נַחֵישׁ, נָ׳ same. Targ. II Kings XXI, 6. Ib. XVII, 17 (ed. Wil. ונְחִישׁוּ Pe.); a. fr.—Ḥull. 95ᵇ דנָחֵישׁ because he had made his movements dependent on an omen. Yeb. 120ᵇ כיס … מְנַחֲשֵׁי אינשי וכ׳ as to purse and bag people are superstitious and do not lend them; a. e.
נְחַשׁ II
- , Af. אַנְחֵשׁ, הַנְחֵשׁ (denom. of נְחָשׁ) to use copper and plate it with silver, to plate. Pesik. Ekhah, p. 122ᵇ הַנְחֵשׁ ליה make it plated for him (in place of solid silver); Yalk. Is. 258 אכחיש, read: אַנְ׳.
נַחַשׁ
- divination from omen, superstition. Num. R. s. 20 בעל נ׳ a believer in omens. Ned. 32ᵃ, v. נָחַשׁ. Y. Sabb. VI, 8ᶜ bot. אע"פ שאין נ׳ יש סימן although you must not make them an omen, they are a sign (presage); Ḥull. 95ᵇ. Ib. כל נ׳ שאינו … אינו נ׳ an omen which is not proposed in the manner of Eliezer … (Gen. XXIV, 13, sq.) or of Jonathan (I Sam. XIV, 9, sq.) is not considered a divination (in the sense of Lev. XIX, 26); a. fr.—Pl. נְחָשִׁים. Tanḥ. Balak 4 בעל נ׳, v. supra. e.g. Genesis 24:13
נָחָשׁ
- 1. [the hissing,] serpent. Gen. R. s. 22 נ׳ הקדמוני the original serpent (the seducer of Eve). Gen. R. s. 20 נ׳ זה רשע בעל תשובות that serpent is wicked and skilled in arguments. Bekh. 8ᵃ נ׳ לשבע שנים וכ׳ a serpent’s pregnancy lasts seven years, and for that wicked animal I find no parallel (in the vegetable kingdom). Gen. R. s. 54 הנ׳ של בית the domestic serpent (harmless); a. fr.—Pl. נְחָשִׁים. Gen. R. s. 84 נ׳ ועקרבים snakes and scorpions; a. fr.
- 2. a pungent (poisonous) fluid in the leaves or in the stems of onions kept for a long time in the ground. Erub. 29ᵇ
- 3. a disease of the eye, v. חִלָּזוֹן. Bekh. VI, 2 חלזון נ׳ וכ׳, expl. ib. 38ᵇ as identical with חלזון; Tosef. ib. IV, 2; Sifra Emor ch. II, Par. 3.
נַחַשׁ ²
- Targ. Y. II, Num. XXIII, 23.— Snh. 19ᵃ נ׳ קא רמי להו (by saying to his comforters, ‘be comforted’) does he not cast an evil omen on them (that they would suffer bereavement)? Gen. R. s. 87, v. הָן; a. e.—Pl. נַחְשִׁין, נַחְשַׁיָּא, נְחָ׳. Targ. Num. l. c. (O. ed. Berl. נַחַשַׁ׳). Targ. O. ib. XXIV, 1. Targ. Y. Lev. XIX, 26; a. fr.
נְחָשׁ
- m. ch. = h. נְחוֹשֶׁת. Targ. Jer. XV, 20. Targ. Num. XXI, 9; a. fr.—Y. Kidd. I, 58ᵈ נ׳ יקיר נ׳ זליל copper rises and falls (silver being the standard), v. יֵקִּירָא. Esth. R. to I, 22 (ר׳ עזריה) מה דהדין קיתונא דנ׳ וכ׳ what purpose this copper vessels serves, an earthen vessel may serve as well; Lev. R. s. 12 (not נחשת); 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 2 distinct written forms H5173 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| נְחָשִׁ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 24:1 | 1 |
| נַ֨חַשׁ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 23:23 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5173, 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
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 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
