נָטַף
to prophesy
‘to prophesy’ 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 Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘drop’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘drip’
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
6 distinct verses where H5197 appears in the Hiphil stem, across 3 books. 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.
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 20:46 וְ/הַטֵּ֖ף conj + Hiphil impv 2ms Son of man, set your face toward the south, and drop [your word] toward the south, and prophesy against the forest of the field in the South;
- Ezekiel 21:2 וְ/הַטֵּ֖ף conj + Hiphil impv 2ms Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem, and drop [your word] toward the sanctuaries, and prophesy against the land of Israel;
Amos 2 verses
- Amos 7:16 תַטִּ֖יף Hiphil impf 2ms Now therefore listen to the word of Yahweh: 'You say, Don't prophesy against Israel, and don't preach against the house of Isaac.'
- Amos 9:13 וְ/הִטִּ֤יפוּ conj + Hiphil pf 3cp "Behold, the days come," says Yahweh, "That the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the one treading grapes him who sows seed; And sweet wine will drip from the mountains, And flow from the hills.
Micah 2 verses
- Micah 2:6 תַּטִּ֖פוּ יַטִּיפ֑וּ/ן יַטִּ֣פוּ Hiphil juss 2mp Hiphil impf 3mp + sfx n Hiphil impf 3mp "Don't you prophesy!" They prophesy. "Don't prophesy about these things. Disgrace won't overtake us."
- Micah 2:11 אַטִּ֣ף מַטִּ֖יף Hiphil impf 1cs Hiphil ptcp.act ms cs If a man walking in a spirit of falsehood lies: 'I will prophesy to you of wine and of strong drink;' He would be the prophet of this people.
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 verb נטף centers on the idea of “to prophesy.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “drop” in the King James Version, “preach” (Berean Standard Bible) and “dripped” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 14 verses across 9 books, an uncommon footprint. Its earliest occurrence is Judges 5:4. Read the stem: it spans 2 stems, including Qal and Hiphil. Dig into 14-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5197 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Song of Solomon 3 verses 21%
- Ezekiel 2 verses 14%
- Amos 2 verses 14%
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 14 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 57%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 43%
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: Drop 5×, Dropped 5×
- American Standard Version: Drop 5×, Dropped 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Preach 5×, Drip 2×, Poured down 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Dripped 5×, Drip 4×, Speak 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5197 across 18 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 H5197 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H5197 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H5197 across 23 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 3 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
- drop, drip
Hiphil
- 1. drip
- 2. of speech, esp. prophecy
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
[ נָטַף ] vb. drop, drip
— 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.
נָטַף
- to drip, overflow. Ker. 6ᵃ שרף הנוֹטֵף וכ׳ the gum which exudes from balm-shrubs. Y. Peah VII, beg. 20ᵃ, v. נְטוֹפָה II. Sabb. 30ᵇ, a. e. שפתותיו נוֹטְפוֹת וכ׳, v. מַר II; a. fr.—נוֹטְפִים, נוֹטְפִין dripping water, collected rain water. Mikv. V, 5, v. זָחַל; a. fr.—Trnsf. (cmp. נָבַע) to speak, prophesy. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXIII, end (ref. to Joel IV, 18) אין יִטְּפוּ אלא נבואה yiṭṭ’fu alludes to prophecy; v. הַטָּפָה.—2) (cmp. טְפֵי III) to be too long, protrude, hang over. Bekh. 43ᵇ חוטמו נוטף one whose nose overhangs his lips; Tosef. ib. V, 3.—[Y. Ber. I, 3ᶜ bot. שלא נטפו ed. Ven., v. חָטַף.] e.g. Joel 4:18
- to drop. Taan. 19ᵃ התחילו גשמים מְנַטְּפִין the rain began to come down drop-wise. Ohol. III, 5 מת שדמו מְנַטֵּף a slain body whose blood flows in drops, opp. שותת. Y. M. Kat. I, 80ᵇ top ועודה מְנַטֶּפֶת and when it is still overflowing; a. fr.
- 1. to be fed by an overflow. Tosef. M. Kat. I, 1 בריכה שנִיטּוֹפָה משדה וכ׳ (Var. ed. Zuck. נִיטְּפָה, נִיטַּיְּפָה Nithpa. of טוּף) a pond formed by the overflow (of rain) from a field &c.
- 2. to be inundated, to overflow. Y. l. c. שדה … שניטופה לתוך וכ׳ a field dependent on irrigation which discharged its overflow (from rain) into another field (and there formed a pond).
- to cause to flow; to drop. Y. Gitt. II, 44ᵇ top וכתב לא (ה)מַטִּיף ‘and he shall write’ (Deut. XXIV, 1) but not form letters by dropping; Y. Sabb. XII, end, 13ᵈ. Y. Pes. V, 32ᶜ bot. ישפך לא יַטִּיף ‘it shall be poured out’ (Deut. XII, 27), but he must not let it fall in drops. Tosef. Sabb. XV (XVI), 9 צריך להַטִּיף וכ׳ he must cause a few drops of the blood of the covenant to flow; Gen. R. s. 46. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXIII, end; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 24:1
נְטַף
- 1. to drip. Part. נָטֵיף, נָטֵף. Targ. Prov. XXVII, 15. Targ. Ps. LXXII, 6 דנָטְפִין (ed. Wil. דנָטְפֵי).—B. Bath. 73ᵇ לא נַטְפָא ניטופתא וכ׳ not a drop fell to the ground.—נָטְפֵי (= h. נוטפים, v. preced.) dripping rain water, contrad. to שפכי rain water collected in spouts (v. מַרְזֵב). Ib. 6ᵃ אחזיק לנ׳ וכ׳ if one has the right to let the dripping water from his roof run into his neighbor’s yard, he may make spouts and gutters &c.—
- *2. (cmp. טוּף) to turn up, lift. Keth. 60ᵃ (to a woman who had her eyes cast down in order not to look at her child) נְטוֹף עיניך Rashi (ed. נטף) turn thy eyes up (look freely around).
- to drop. Targ. Ps. LXVIII, 9; a. e.—V. טוּף.
נֶטֶף
- (נָטַף 2) grapes hanging down directly from the trunk, v. כָּתֵף. Peah VII, 4; 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 17 distinct written forms H5197 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5197, 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. 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 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
