נְחֹ֫שֶׁת
bronze
‘bronze’ 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 Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Dual
- Exactly two — for natural pairs and some measures of time.
Every verse where H5178 appears in the Book of Exodus — 34 distinct verses. 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
- Exodus 25:3 וּ/נְחֹֽשֶׁת conj + n c fs This is the offering which you shall take from them: gold, silver, brass,
- Exodus 26:11 נְחֹ֖שֶׁת n c fs You shall make fifty clasps of brass, and put the clasps into the loops, and couple the tent together, that it may be one.
- Exodus 26:37 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs You shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia, and overlay them with gold: their hooks shall be of gold: and you shall cast five sockets of brass for them.
- Exodus 27:2 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs You shall make its horns on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it; and you shall overlay it with brass.
- Exodus 27:3 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs You shall make its pots to take away its ashes, its shovels, its basins, its flesh hooks, and its fire pans: all its vessels you shall make of brass.
- Exodus 27:4 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת נְחֹ֔שֶׁת n c fs n c fs You shall make a grating for it of network of brass: and on the net you shall make four brazen rings in its four corners.
- Exodus 27:6 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs You shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with brass.
- Exodus 27:10 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs and the pillars of it shall be twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
- Exodus 27:11 נְחֹ֔שֶׁת n c fs Likewise for the north side in length there shall be hangings one hundred cubits long, and the pillars of it twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars, and their fillets, of silver.
- Exodus 27:17 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs All the pillars of the court round about shall be filleted with silver; their hooks of silver, and their sockets of brass.
- Exodus 27:18 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs The length of the court shall be one hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty every where, and the height five cubits, of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass.
- Exodus 27:19 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs All the instruments of the tent in all its service, and all the pins of it, and all the pins of the court, shall be of brass.
- Exodus 30:18 נְחֹ֛שֶׁת נְחֹ֖שֶׁת n c fs n c fs "You shall also make a basin of brass, and the base of it of brass, in which to wash. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it.
- Exodus 31:4 וּ/בַ/נְּחֹֽשֶׁת conj + prep det + n c fs to devise skillful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
- Exodus 35:5 וּ/נְחֹֽשֶׁת conj + n c fs 'Take from among you an offering to Yahweh. Whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, Yahweh's offering: gold, silver, brass,
- Exodus 35:16 הַ/נְּחֹ֨שֶׁת֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs the altar of burnt offering, with its grating of brass, it poles, and all its vessels, the basin and its base;
- Exodus 35:24 וּ/נְחֹ֔שֶׁת conj + n c fs Everyone who did offer an offering of silver and brass brought Yahweh's offering; and everyone, with whom was found acacia wood for any work of the service, brought it.
- Exodus 35:32 וּ/בַ/נְּחֹֽשֶׁת conj + prep det + n c fs and to make skillful works, to work in gold, in silver, in brass,
- Exodus 36:18 נְחֹ֖שֶׁת n c fs He made fifty clasps of brass to couple the tent together, that it might be a unit.
- Exodus 36:38 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs and the five pillars of it with their hooks. He overlaid their capitals and their fillets with gold, and their five sockets were of brass.
- Exodus 38:2 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs He made its horns on its four corners. Its horns were of one piece with it, and he overlaid it with brass.
- Exodus 38:3 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs He made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, the shovels, the basins, the flesh-hooks, and the fire pans. He made all its vessels of brass.
- Exodus 38:4 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs He made for the altar a grating of a network of brass, under the ledge around it beneath, reaching halfway up.
- Exodus 38:5 הַ/נְּחֹ֑שֶׁת ptcl def.art + n c fs He cast four rings for the four ends of brass grating, to be places for the poles.
- Exodus 38:6 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs He made the poles of acacia wood, and overlaid them with brass.
- Exodus 38:8 נְחֹ֔שֶׁת נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs n c fs He made the basin of brass, and its base of brass, out of the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered at the door of the tent of meeting.
- Exodus 38:10 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs their pillars were twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their fillets were of silver.
- Exodus 38:11 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs For the north side one hundred cubits, their pillars twenty, and their sockets twenty, of brass; the hooks of the pillars, and their fillets, of silver.
- Exodus 38:17 נְחֹשֶׁת֒ n c fs The sockets for the pillars were of brass. The hooks of the pillars and their fillets were of silver; and the overlaying of their capitals, of silver; and all the pillars of the court were filleted with silver.
- Exodus 38:19 נְחֹ֑שֶׁת n c fs Their pillars were four, and their sockets four, of brass; their hooks of silver, and the overlaying of their capitals, and their fillets, of silver.
- Exodus 38:20 נְחֹֽשֶׁת n c fs All the pins of the tent, and around the court, were of brass.
- Exodus 38:29 וּ/נְחֹ֥שֶׁת conj + n c fs cs The brass of the offering was seventy talents, and two thousand four hundred shekels.
- Exodus 38:30 הַ/נְּחֹ֔שֶׁת הַ/נְּחֹ֖שֶׁת ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs With this he made the sockets to the door of the tent of meeting, the brazen altar, the brazen grating for it, all the vessels of the altar,
- Exodus 39:39 הַ/נְּחֹ֗שֶׁת הַ/נְּחֹ֨שֶׁת֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs the brazen altar, its grating of brass, its poles, all of its vessels, the basin and its base,
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
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.
- #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
- Exodus 34 verses 29%
- 2 Chronicles 14 verses 12%
- 1 Kings 11 verses 9%
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 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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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
- Genesis 4:22
- Exodus 25:3
- Numbers 21:9
- Deuteronomy 8:9
- Joshua 6:19
- Judges 16:21
- 1 Samuel 17:5
- 2 Samuel 3:34
- 1 Kings 4:13
- 2 Kings 16:14
- 1 Chronicles 15:19
- 2 Chronicles 1:5
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.
