נָצָה
to struggle
‘to struggle’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal 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”).
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘thy cities shall fall in ruins’
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 3 times (27%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural 1 time (9%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5327 appears — 10 distinct verses across 9 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.
Exodus 2 verses
- Exodus 2:13 נִצִּ֑ים Niphal ptcp.act mp He went out the second day, and, behold, two men of the Hebrews were fighting with each other. He said to him who did the wrong, "Why do you strike your fellow?"
- Exodus 21:22 יִנָּצ֣וּ Niphal impf 3mp "If men fight and hurt a pregnant woman so that she gives birth prematurely, and yet no harm follows, he shall be surely fined as much as the woman's husband demands and the judges allow.
Leviticus 1 verse
Numbers 1 verse
Deuteronomy 1 verse
2 Samuel 1 verse
2 Kings 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 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.
The Hebrew verb נצה centers on the idea of “to struggle.” Its earliest occurrence is Exodus 2:13. Spanning 10 verses in 9 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Read the stem: it spans 3 stems, including Niphal and Hiphil. Related forms include מצה, מצות and נוצה. Dig into 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5327 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
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 10 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 50%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 10%
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†: Ruinous 2×, Strive 2×, Strove 2×
- American Standard Version†: Ruinous 2×, Strive 2×, Strove together 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Are fighting 2×, Rebelled 2×, Rubble 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Ruined 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5327 across 11† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5327 across 10† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5327 across 14† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5327 across 11† 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.
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 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.
נצה I struggle
Niphal
- . recipr. struggle with each other
Hiphil
- . engage in struggle against
נצה II fall in ruins
Qal
- thy cities shall fall in ruins
Niphal
- . ruined heaps, i.e. ruin-heaps
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
II. [ נָצָה ] vb. Niph. Hiph. struggle
III. [ נָצָה ] vb. fall in ruins
— 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.
נָצָה
- , v. נצי
נצי
- to press; Nif. נִצָּה (b. h.; cmp. חָבַל) to wrangle, fight.
- same. Tanḥ. Ḥuck. ed. Bub. 1; Num. R. s. 18, end ראה שני צפרים מִתְנַצִּין וכ׳ saw two birds fight &c.
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 10 distinct written forms H5327 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| נִצִּ֖ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Kings 19:25 | 2 |
| בְּ/הַצֹּתָ֖/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Numbers 26:9 | 1 |
| בְּ/הַצּוֹת֨/וֹ | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Psalms 60:1 | 1 |
| הִצּ֜וּ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Numbers 26:9 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּנָּצ֤וּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 2 Samuel 14:6 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּנָּצוּ֙ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Leviticus 24:10 | 1 |
| יִנָּצ֣וּ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Exodus 21:22 | 1 |
| יִנָּצ֨וּ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Deuteronomy 25:11 | 1 |
| נִצִּ֑ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 2:13 | 1 |
| תִּצֶּ֖ינָה | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural | Jeremiah 4:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5327, 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 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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
- Exodus 2:13
- Leviticus 24:10
- Numbers 26:9
- Deuteronomy 25:11
- 2 Samuel 14:6
- 2 Kings 19:25
- Psalms 60:1
- Isaiah 37:26
- Jeremiah 4:7
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.
