נַפְתָּלִי
Naphtali
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Naphtali’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H5321 appears in the Book of Deuteronomy — 3 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.
Deuteronomy
- Deuteronomy 27:13 וְ/נַפְתָּלִֽי conj + n Proper These shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
- Deuteronomy 33:23 וּ/לְ/נַפְתָּלִ֣י נַפְתָּלִי֙ conj + prep + n Proper n Proper Of Naphtali he said, Naphtali, satisfied with favor, Full with the blessing of Yahweh, Possess you the west and the south.
- Deuteronomy 34:2 נַפְתָּלִ֔י n Proper and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, to the hinder sea,
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.
At its core, נפתלי (Naphtâlîy) means “Naphtali.” First canonically at Genesis 30:8, it enters the text early. With 47 verses in 13 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5321 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 →
- 47
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 47 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #723
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 723 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 47 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 10 verses 21%
- 1 Chronicles 7 verses 15%
- Judges 6 verses 13%
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 47 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 19 verses · 40%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 18 verses · 38%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 21%
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: Naphtali 46×
- American Standard Version: Naphtali 48×
- Berean Standard Bible: Naphtali 43×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Naphtali 49×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5321 across 50 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H5321 across 50 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H5321 across 47 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 4 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5321 across 52 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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.
- 1. second son of Jacob and Bilhah Gn 30:8 (J), 35:25; 46:24 (P), 1 Ch 2:2, cf. Gn 49:21 (poem). e.g. Genesis 30:8
- 2. as a tribe of Isr.:
- a. Ju 1:33; 4:10; 5:18; Dt 33:23(×2) +; so (Hex, only P) בְּנֵי נ׳ Ju 4:6; Nu 1:42 + 6 times, מַטֵּה נ׳ Nu 2:29; 1 K 7:14 + 5 times, מַטֵּה בְּנֵי נ׳ Nu 10:27; 34:28; Jos 19:39; שַׁעַר נ׳ Ez 48:34 (in new Jerus.); אֶרֶץ נ׳ 1 K 15:20; 2 K 15:29, cf. Is 8:23; קֶדֶשׁ נ׳ Ju 4:6; הַר נ׳ Jos 20:7; גְּבוּל נ׳ Ez 48:4, יָ֫מָּה נ׳ v 3; עָרֵי נ׳ 2 Ch 16:4. e.g. Judges 1:33
- b. as territorial name Dt 34:2 (JE) 1 K 4:15; 1 Ch 12:41 (van d. H. v 40), 2 Ch 34:6; Ju 6:35; 7:23 might be a or b. e.g. Deuteronomy 34:2
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
n.pr.m. et trib. Naphtali, Νεφθαλει(μ), etc. (interpr. as my wrestling Gn 30:8; perhaps orig. crafty, cunning one);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from פתל (pâthal) (H6617) — to twist.
Forms in the corpus
The 18 distinct written forms H5321 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| נַפְתָּלִ֑י | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:24 | 8 |
| נַפְתָּלִ֖י | Noun, Proper | Ezekiel 48:34 | 8 |
| נַפְתָּלִ֔י | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 34:2 | 7 |
| נַפְתָּלִ֗י | Noun, Proper | Ezekiel 48:4 | 6 |
| נַפְתָּלִֽי | Noun, Proper | Genesis 30:8 | 4 |
| נַפְתָּלִי֙ | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 33:23 | 3 |
| וְ/נַפְתָּלִֽי | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 27:13 | 2 |
| לְ/נַ֨פְתָּלִ֔י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 27:19 | 2 |
| נַפְתָּלִ֜י | Noun, Proper | Joshua 21:6 | 2 |
| בְּ/נַפְתָּלִ֑י | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 4:15 | 1 |
| וְ/נַפְתָּלִ֑י | Noun, Proper | Judges 5:18 | 1 |
| וְ/נַפְתָּלִ֖י | Noun, Proper | Exodus 1:4 | 1 |
| וְ/נַפְתָּלִ֗י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 12:40 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/נַפְתָּלִ֔י | Noun, Proper | Judges 6:35 | 1 |
| וּ/לְ/נַפְתָּלִ֣י | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 33:23 | 1 |
| וּ/מִ/נַּפְתָּלִ֖י | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 12:34 | 1 |
| מִ/נַּפְתָּלִ֥י | Noun, Proper | Judges 7:23 | 1 |
| נַפְתָּלִ֥י | Noun, Proper | Ezekiel 48:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5321, 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 6 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Naphtali). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
My wrestling, the fifth son of Jacob. His mother was Bilhah, Rachel's handmaid (Gen. 30:8). When Jacob went down into Egypt, Naphtali had four sons (Gen. 46:24). Little is known of him as an individual.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(wrestling), the fifth son of Jacob; the second child name to him by Bilhah, Rachel's slave. His birth and the bestowal of his name are recorded in (Genesis 30:8) When the census was taken at Mount Sinai the tribe of Naphtali numbered no less than 53,400 fighting men, (Numbers 1:43; 2:50) but when the borders of the promised land were reached, its numbers were reduced to, 45,400. (Numbers 26:48-50) During the march through the wilderness Naphtali occupied a position on the north of the sacred tent with Dan and Asher. (Numbers 2:25-31) In the apportionment of the land, the lot of Naphtali was enclosed on three sides by those of other tribes. On the west lay Asher, on the south Zebulun, and on the east the transjordanic Manasseh. (In the division of the kingdom Naphtali belonged to the kingdom of Israel, and later was a part of Galilee, bordering on the northwestern pert of the Sea of Galilee, and including Capernaum and Bethsaida.--Ed.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
that struggles or fights
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 45 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 47 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 30:8
- Exodus 1:4
- Numbers 1:15
- Deuteronomy 27:13
- Joshua 19:32
- Judges 1:33
- 1 Kings 4:15
- 2 Kings 15:29
- 1 Chronicles 2:2
- 2 Chronicles 16:4
- Psalms 68:27
- Isaiah 9:1
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.
