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נְחֹ֫שֶׁת

bronze

‘bronze’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓

H5178 Strong's Hebrew
nᵉchôsheth Transliteration
/nekh-o'-sheth/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 140 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

The Hebrew noun נחשת centers on the idea of “bronze.” Where the King James Version says “brass,” newer translations reach for “bronze” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 119 verses across 21 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its common vocabulary. The word gravitates to Exodus (29%), then 2 Chronicles and 1 Kings. The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
brasen
Modern gloss
bronze
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H5178 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 →

119
distinct verses
The word appears in 119 distinct verses.
21 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 21 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 4:22
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 4:22.
Zechariah 6:1
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Zechariah 6:1.
#323
by frequency
Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 323 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 119 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 42 · 35%
  • Historical 54 · 45%
  • Wisdom 1 · 1%
  • Prophets 22 · 18%

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 119 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 51 verses · 43%
  • Torah (Pentateuch) 42 verses · 35%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 26 verses · 22%

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: Brass 86×, Brasen 24×, Fetters 4×
  • American Standard Version: Brass 86×, Brazen 21×, Fetters 5×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Bronze 117×, Bronze shackles 5×, Copper 3×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bronze 112×, Were bronze 4×, Bronze of 2×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H5178 across 141 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Brass” 86×
  • “Brasen” 24×
  • “Fetters” 4×
  • “Were of brass” 3×
  • “All of brass” 2×
  • “Chains” 2×
  • “Shall be of brass” 2×

Plus 18 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 H5178 across 140 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Brass” 86×
  • “Brazen” 21×
  • “Fetters” 5×
  • “Were of brass” 3×
  • “All of brass” 2×
  • “Thereof of brass” 2×

Plus 21 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 H5178 across 139 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bronze” 117×
  • “Bronze shackles” 5×
  • “Copper” 3×
  • “Were bronze” 3×
  • “Or bronze” 2×

Plus 9 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H5178 across 133 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Bronze” 112×
  • “Were bronze” 4×
  • “Bronze of” 2×
  • “Was bronze” 2×

Plus 13 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

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 4 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.

נחשת I copper, bronze

  • 1. copper
  • 2. fetters of copper or bronze
  • 3. as less in value than gold but more than wood
  • 4. fig. of pitiless sky

נחשת II lust, harlotry

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. נְחֹ֫שֶׁת 137 n.m. copper, bronze

II. [ נְחֹ֫שֶׁת ] n.[f.] Ez 16:36 where context favours mng. lust, harlotry, or specif. sens. obscoen.

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from נחושה (nᵉchûwshâh) (H5154) — bronze.

Part of speech: Noun Masculine TWOT: 1349a , 1350a


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.

נְחוֹשֶׁת

  • (b. h.)
  • 1. copper. Zeb. 22ᵃ (ref. to Ex. XXX, 18) לנ׳ הקשתיו וכ׳ I compared it (the foot of the laver with the laver itself) with regard to its being of copper, but not with regard to anything else. Pesik. Ekhah, p. 122ᵇ מטבעות של נ׳ וכ׳ silver-plated copper coins. Keth. VII, 10, v. צָרַף; a. fr. e.g. Exodus 30:18
  • 2. bronze, v. next w.
  • 3. copper vessels. Y. Keth. X, 33ᵈ bot. להיות גובין מן הנ׳ וכ׳ to seize (for the widowhood) copper vessels and dining plates.
  • 4. the (copper) bottom or rim. Sabb. 41ᵃ מפני שנְחוּשְׁתָּהּ מחממתה because its double bottom gives out heat to warm the water (even after the removal of the coals). Kel. VIII, 3; IX, 1; 3 נ׳ של תנור the (copper) rim of the stove. [Yoma 38ᵃ, v. next w.]
  • 5. the polished, smooth side of skin (קֶלֶף). Y. Meg. I, 71ᵈ top מקום נְחוּשְׁתּוֹ on its smooth side, opp. מקום שיער the hairy side.

נְחשֶׁת

  • , v. נְחוֹשֶׁת, נְחוּשְׁתָּן.

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 48 distinct written forms H5178 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
נְחֹ֑שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Deuteronomy 28:23 17
נְחֹֽשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Deuteronomy 8:9 17
נְחֹ֖שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 26:11 13
נְחֹ֔שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 27:4 10
הַ/נְּחֹ֨שֶׁת֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 35:16 8
הַ/נְּחֹ֛שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 16:15 5
נְחֹ֨שֶׁת֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:5 5
בַּֽ/נְחֻשְׁתַּ֔יִם Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute 2 Chronicles 33:11 4
הַ/נְּחֹ֜שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 18:4 4
הַ/נְּחֹֽשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 9:2 4
וּ/נְחֹֽשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 25:3 4
הַ/נְּחֹ֖שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 38:30 3
וּ/נְחֹ֥שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 22:3 2
הַ/נְּחֹ֔שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 38:30 2
הַ/נְּחֹ֗שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 39:39 2
וּ/בַ/נְּחֹֽשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 31:4 2
וּ/נְחֹ֔שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 35:24 2
נְחֹ֗שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Chronicles 6:13 2
נְחֹ֜שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezra 8:27 2
נְחֹ֣שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Daniel 10:6 2
נְחֹשֶׁת֒ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 38:17 2
נְחֻשְׁתָּ֖/ם Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Kings 25:13 2
בַֽ/נְחֻשְׁתַּ֔יִם Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute 2 Kings 25:7 1
בַֽ/נְחֻשְׁתַּ֗יִם Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute Jeremiah 52:11 1
בַּ/נְּחֹ֑שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Kings 7:14 1
בַּ/נְּחֹ֨שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Chronicles 2:14 1
הַ/נְּחֹ֑שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 38:5 1
הַ/נְּחֹשֶׁת֮ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 16:14 1
וְ/הַ/נְּחֹ֣שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 29:2 1
וְ/לַ/נְּחֹ֤שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 22:14 1
וְ/לַ/נְּחֹ֥שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 22:16 1
וּ/בִ/נְחֹ֧שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Joshua 22:8 1
וּ/בַ/נְּחֹ֣שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Chronicles 2:7 1
וּ/נְחֹ֕שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 29:7 1
וּ/נְחֹ֖שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Deuteronomy 33:25 1
וּ֠/נְחֹשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 22:20 1
לִ/נְחֹ֖שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Kings 25:16 1
לִ/נְחֻשְׁתַּ֣יִם Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute 2 Samuel 3:34 1
לִ/נְחֻשְׁתָּ֖/ם Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Jeremiah 52:20 1
לַ/נְּחֹ֗שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 29:2 1
נְ֠חֹשֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 22:18 1
נְחָשְׁתִּֽ/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Lamentations 3:7 1
נְחֹ֛שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Exodus 30:18 1
נְחֹ֥שֶׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 1:7 1
נְחֹֽשֶֽׁת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:5 1
נְחֹשֶׁת֮ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 25:17 1
נְחֻשְׁתֵּ/ךְ֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Ezekiel 16:36 1
נְחֻשְׁתָּ֗/הּ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Ezekiel 24:11 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5178, 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. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 111 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 119 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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