נֵ֫פֶל
miscarriage
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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (67%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5309 appears — 3 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.
Job 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Ecclesiastes 1 verse
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.
נפל (nephel) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “miscarriage.” A scarce word — 3 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Job, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Job 3:16. It clusters with נפל, מפל and מפלה under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5309 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Job 1 verse 33%
- Psalms 1 verse 33%
- Ecclesiastes 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 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: Untimely birth 2×
- American Standard Version: Untimely birth 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Stillborn child 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Is the stillborn child 1×, Like a 1×, May they be like the miscarriage of 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5309 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5309 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5309 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H5309 across 4 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.
- untimely birth, abortion, miscarriage
Word origin
[נֶפֶל] n.m. Jb 3:16 miscarriage, abortion;—נֵ֫פֶל abs. Jb 3:16 (Baer, Ginsb., > van d. H. נֶפֶל), נָ֑פל Ec 6:3; cstr. נֵפֶל אֵשֶׁת ψ 58:9.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נפל (nâphal) (H5307) — to fall.
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.
נָפַל
- (b. h.) to fall, lie down; to be dropped; to occur. Sabb. XVI, 2 נָפְלָה דליקה if a conflagration takes place. Pes. II, 3, v. מַפּוֹלֶת. Y. Sot. VII, 21ᵈ top (ref. to יקים, Deut. XXVII, 26) וכי יש תורה נוֹפֶלֶת is there a falling law (to need erection)? Ned. 65ᵇ כל הנוֹפֵל אינו נופל לידי וכ׳ he who falls (becomes poor) does not immediately fall into the hands of (become dependent on) the charities (but his friends support him for a time). B. Kam. IX, 11, a. fr. יִפְּלוּ דמיו לנדבה its equivalent must be surrendered as a donation to the Temple. B. Bath. IX, 4 האחין … שנ׳ אחד מהן לאומנות נ׳ לאמצע if one of two partner brothers (heirs) has been summoned to public service, his salary goes into the common fund. Y. Shek. V, 49ᵇ top בשביל ששמעתי שנפלה לך ירושה וכ׳ since I heard that an inheritance has fallen to thy share at a distant place, take (this as a loan) &c.; a. v. fr.—Imperat. פּוֹל. Tosef. Dem. VI, 4 ופול תחתיי וכ׳ (Var. טול, some ed. עול) and surrender thyself to public service in my place (v. supra). e.g. Deuteronomy 27:26
- to cause to fall; to throw down. Gen. R. s. 26, v. נָפִיל. B. Kam. III, 10 ה׳ את שינו struck out his tooth; Tosef. ib. IX, 23; a. fr.—Esp. to miscarry. Nidd. III, 1 המַפֶּלֶת וכ׳ if a woman loses a lump-shaped embryo; a. fr.
- to prostrate one’s self. Deut. R. s. 2, v. נִיפּוּל.
- (denom. of נִיפּוּל) to fall apart, be spoiled. Tosef. Sabb. VI (VII), 14 שלא תִינָּפֵל הפת, v. צָוַוח.
נְפַל
- Targ. II Sam. I, 4. Targ. Koh. XI, 3 למִנְפַּל; a. v. fr.—Imperat. פִּיל. Targ. Is. L, 11.—Part. נָפֵיל, part. pass. נְפִיל. Targ. Prov. XI, 5 (ed. Wil. נְפַל). Targ. Ps. CXLV, 14; a. e.—Ḥull. 51ᵃ אי נְפוּל לארעא if they were thrown down (violently). Ib.ᵇ, v. נְגִיחוּתָא. Ned. 65ᵇ כל דמעני לאו עלי נפיל not every one that becomes poor, falls on me (for support). B. Mets. 105ᵃ בזרא דנ׳ נ׳ a seed (of weeds) once fallen, has fallen (cannot be destroyed by the plough). Meg. 15ᵇ נַפְלָה ליה מילתא בדעתיה something (a suspicion) had entered his mind; a. fr.
- , as preced. Hif. Targ. Ps. LXXVIII, 28. Targ. Y. Ex. XXI, 22; a. fr.—Ḥull. 42ᵃ top אַפּוּלֵי אפיל (read אַפְּלָא) she may have miscarried. Snh. 109ᵇ ומַפְּלָא ליה and she miscarried through his fault; a. fr.
- to be upset, fall in. M. Kat. 2ᵃ דאתי לאִינְּפוּלֵי a caving in (of the ground through which the water makes a road) might occur; ib.ᵇ; a. e.
נָפִל
- , v. נָפִיל
נֵפֶל
- (preced. wds.)
- 1. capacity for seed, v. נְפִילָה.
- 2. (b. h.) abortion; premature, not viable birth. Tosef. Ohol. XVI, 13; Pes. 9ᵃ, a. e.—Y. Yeb. XI, end, 12ᵇ אינו נ׳ is not considered a non-viable birth (for legal purposes); a. v. fr.—Pl. נְפָלִים. Gen. R. s. 26 (play on הַנְּפִלִים, Gen. VI, 4) שמלאו את העולם נ׳ וכ׳ they filled the world with abortions by their lascivious life. Tosef. l. c.; a. fr. e.g. Genesis 6:4
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 3 distinct written forms H5309 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/נָּֽפֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 6:3 | 1 |
| כְ/נֵ֣פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 3:16 | 1 |
| נֵ֥פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 58:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5309, 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
- מפל mappâl H4651 refuse
- מפלה mappâlâh H4654 ruin
- מפלת mappeleth H4658 carcass
- נפיל nᵉphîyl H5303 giants
- נפל nᵉphal H5308 to fall
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
