נָסַח
to tear away
‘to tear away’ 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 Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘the house of proud men will’
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (50%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (25%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (25%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 4 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5255 appears — 4 distinct verses across 3 books. 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.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Proverbs 2 verses
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.
נסח (nâçach) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to tear away.” It occurs a mere 4 verses across Scripture. Proverbs dominates its distribution — 2 of 4 verses. Scripture first uses it in Deuteronomy 28:63. The verb spans 2 stems, from Qal to Niphal. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5255 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Proverbs 2 verses 50%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 25%
- Psalms 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 75%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 25%
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: Pluck thee out 1×, Shall be rooted out 1×, Will destroy 1×
- American Standard Version: Pluck thee out 1×, Shall be rooted out of it 1×, Will root up 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Tear you away 1×, Tears down 1×, Will be uprooted 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Tear you 1×, Will be torn away 1×, Will tear down 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5255 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5255 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5255 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5255 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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
- the house of proud men will י׳ tear down
Niphal
- . and ye shall be torn away from off the land.
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
[ נָסַח ] vb. pull or tear away
— 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.
נָסַח
- to remove. Sot. 42ᵇ; Yoma 75ᵃ (ref. to יַשְׁחֶנָה, Prov. XII, 25) יִשְׂחֶנָּה מדעתו (Ms. M. 2 יַסִּיחֶנָּה, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 50) let him banish it from his mind; Yalk. Prov. 950; Snh. 100ᵇ יַשִּׂיחֶנָּה; v. סוּחַ. e.g. Proverbs 12:25
- (with דעת) to divert the mind, to discard. Sabb. 82ᵃ יַסִּיחַ דעתו, expl. יסיח דעתו מדברים אחרים he must discard from his mind everything else. Y. Ber. VI, end, 10ᵈ ה׳ דעתו (ed. Krot. הִסִּיעַ) if he has abandoned the thought (of drinking more wine); a. e.—Snh. l. c.; Yoma l. c., v. supra.—V. הֶסֵּיחַ.
נְסַח
- 1. to remove, take out. Targ. Jud. XIV, 9 (h. text רדה).—Part. pass. נְסִיחַ. Ib.—Cant. R. to V, 14 אימיה נָסְחָא וכ׳ his mother took the bread out of the oven, and he ate; Pesik. B’shall., p. 90ᵇ, sq. נשא (corr. acc.).—[
- 2. to lift, weigh.—Denom. מְסָחָא, מִסְחֲתָא.]
- to remove, sweep out; to exile. Lam. R. to I, 13 (expl. וירדנה, ib., with ref. to Jud. l. c.) נַסְּחָהּ (not נסחא) he removed (exiled) her.—Part. pass. מְנַסַּח. Targ. Prov. XXIX, 21 (h. text מנון!).
- to be pulled out. Targ. Esth. VII, 9 (fr. Ezra VI, 11). e.g. Ezra 6:11
- as preced. Hif. Zeb. 20ᵇ אַסּוּחֵי מַסַּח דעתיה he discards (the service) from his mind; לא מַסַּח he does not. Pes. 103ᵇ אַסְּחִיתוּ דעתייכו you have abandoned the thought (of drinking). Gitt. 53ᵇ א׳ דעתיה he ceased to have his mind on it (as sacred matter that must be guarded); a. fr.
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 4 distinct written forms H5255 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/יִסָּחֲ/ךָ֣ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 52:5 | 1 |
| וְ/נִסַּחְתֶּם֙ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Deuteronomy 28:63 | 1 |
| יִסְּח֥וּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Proverbs 2:22 | 1 |
| יִסַּ֥ח | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 15:25 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5255, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
