נָצַח

to excel

also: be bright, be preeminent, be perpetual, be overseer fuller range ↓

H5329 Strong's Hebrew

nâtsach Transliteration

/naw-tsakh'/ Pronunciation

Usage in the Hebrew Bible 61 appearances

Definition — BDB

to excel, be bright, be preeminent, be perpetual, be overseer, be enduring - (Niphal) enduring (participle) - (Piel) to act as overseer or superintendent or director or chief

Cite this entry

Strong's H5329 — נצח (nâtsach), "to excel". Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906). Lemma, https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H5329.

Show BibTeX & RIS

BibTeX

@misc{lemma-H5329,
  author       = {Lemma},
  title        = {H5329 נצח (nâtsach) — to excel},
  howpublished = {\url{https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H5329}},
  note         = {Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906). Lemma interlinear Bible study tool}
}

RIS

TY  - GEN
AU  - Lemma
TI  - H5329 — נצח (nâtsach), "to excel"
PB  - Lemma
N1  - Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB, 1906)
UR  - https://lemma.gebible.app/w/H5329
ER  -

Compare with another word →

See every Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →

Grammar key — what these labels mean

Verb: An action or state-of-being word.

Piel: An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘act as overseer’
Niphal: Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).

Participle Active: A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
Infinitive Construct: A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
Participle Passive: A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).

Absolute: The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.

Masculine: Grammatically masculine.
Feminine: Grammatically feminine.

Singular: One.
Plural: More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).

60 distinct verses where H5329 appears in the Piel stem, across 5 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.

1 Chronicles 2 verses

2 Chronicles 4 verses

Ezra 2 verses

Psalms 51 verses

Habakkuk 1 verse

Habakkuk 3:19 לַ/מְנַצֵּ֖חַ prep det + Piel ptcp.act ms Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer's feet, And enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.

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 נצח centers on the idea of “to excel.” The word gravitates to Psalms (84%), then 2 Chronicles and 1 Chronicles. It appears 61 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its moderately common vocabulary. The verb spans 2 stems, from Niphal to Piel. Where the King James Version says “chief musician,” newer translations reach for “choirmaster” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890

excel

Modern gloss

to excel

Strong's 1890 agrees

About this word

Strong's H5329 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 →

61: distinct verses; The word appears in 61 distinct verses.
6 / 39: OT books; The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
1 Chronicles 15:21: first appearance; The earliest occurrence is in 1 Chronicles 15:21.
Habakkuk 3:19: last appearance; The latest occurrence is in Habakkuk 3:19.
#629: by frequency; Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 629 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 61 occurrences in the concordance →

Most concentrated in

Psalms 51 verses 84%
2 Chronicles 4 verses 7%
1 Chronicles 2 verses 3%

By section of the Old Testament

Pentateuch 0 · 0%
Historical 8 · 13%
Wisdom 51 · 84%
Prophets 2 · 3%

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 61 distinct verses.

Writings (Ketuvim) 59 verses · 97%
Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 3%

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: Chief musician 55×, Overseers 2×, Set forward 2×
American Standard Version: Have the oversight 2×, Overseers 2×
Berean Standard Bible: Choirmaster 56×, Supervise 2×, Supervisors 2×
unfoldingWord Literal Text: Chief musician 5×, Directors 3×, Act as overseers 2×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H5329 across 65 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Chief musician” 55×
“Overseers” 2×
“Set forward” 2×

Plus 6 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 H5329 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Have the oversight” 2×
“Overseers” 2×

Plus 5 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 H5329 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Choirmaster” 56×
“Supervise” 2×
“Supervisors” 2×

Plus 3 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 2 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H5329 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

“Chief musician” 5×
“Directors” 3×
“Act as overseers” 2×
“Lead” 2×
“To” 2×

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 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.

Niphal

. enduring

Piel

= act as overseer, superintendent, director

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

[ נָצַח ] vb. be pre-eminent, enduring

— 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

Part of speech: Verb TWOT: 1402

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.

נָצַח

[to be bright, pure,] (cmp. זָכָה) to be victorious, win, prevail. Y. Sabb. VII, 5ᵇ top אם לִנְצוֹחַ אם להִינָּצֵחַ whether to conquer or to be conquered. Pes. 119ᵃ (play on לַמְנַצֵּחַ) זמרו למי שנוֹצְחִין אותו ושמח sing to him who rejoices when they conquer him (prevail over him to change his evil decrees); Midr. Till. to Ps. IV. Pesik. R. s. 40 נָצַחְתִּי לדור וכ׳ I conquered the generation of the flood and was the loser by it, because I destroyed &c. Ib. נְצָחַנִי משה וכ׳ Moses conquered me …, and I gained all those masses; a. fr.—Part. pass. נָצוּחַ. Ib.Pesik. R. s. 40 נָצַחְתִּי לדור וכ׳ I conquered the generation of the flood and was the loser by it, because I destroyed &c. Ib. נְצָחַנִי משה וכ׳ Moses conquered me …, and I gained all those masses; a. fr.—Part. pass. נָצוּחַ. Ib. בשעה שאני נוצח … ובשעה שאני נ׳ וכ׳ when I prevail, I lose, but when I am prevailed over, I gain; a. e.
- 1. to make illustrious, to glorify. Midr. Till. l. c. (expl. למנצח) למי שהוא נאה לנַצֵּחַ to him whom it is befitting to glorify.
- 2. to conquer, prevail over. Ib. מלך ב"וד מְנַצְּחִים אותו וכ׳ a human king is angry when people defeat him (in argument; cmp. זְכֵי Pa.); Pes. l. c.—B. Mets. 59ᵇ נִצְּחוּנִי בני (or נְצָחוּנִי) my children have won over me. Ib. תלמידי חכמים שמנצחים וכ׳ scholars who defeat one another in discussion. Snh. 91ᵃ אם יְנַּצְּחוּנִי … נַצַּחְתֶּם if they defeat me, say to them, you have defeated an ignoramus among us; ואם אני אֲנַצֵּחַ … תורת משה נִצְּחַתְכֶם and if I defeat them, say to them, the law of Moses has defeated you; a. fr.—Part. pass. מְנוּצָּח. Midr. Till. l. c. למי שמנ׳ וכ׳ to him who allows himself to be won over by his creatures (v. supra); a. e.
- to be defeated. Y. Sabb. II, 5ᵇ top v. supra.

נְצַח

1. to be glad, to sing. Targ. II Esth. I, 2 והוה נָצַח וכ׳ it flew singing among &c.
2. to succeed, thrive. Targ. Koh. XI, 2.
3. to be victorious. Targ. O. Ex. XXXII, 18, v. נַצְחָא; a. e.—Y. Sot. IX, 24ᵇ נַצְחוּ טליא the boys (John Hyrcan’s sons) have won the battle; Bab. Sot. 33ᵃ; Tosef. ib. XIII, 5. Tam. 32ᵃ, v. סִטְנָא; a. e.
- to conquer, overpower. Targ. Y. Num. XVI, 14; a. e.—Lam. R. to I, 13 (expl. וירדנה ib.) נַצְּחָהּ (not נצחא) he conquered her.
- to cheer up, play. Y. Ter. VIII, end, 46ᶜ וא׳ קדמיהון and played before them; (Gen. R. s. 63 מוזגה, v. מְזַג).
- 1. to be bright, shine, excel. Targ. Ez. XIX, 11. Ib. XXXI, 8; a. e.
- 2. to be defeated. Targ. Y. Ex. XXXII, 18.

נִצֵּחַ

preced.) successful, convincing, irrefutable. Snh. 105ᵃ (ref. to Jer. VIII, 5) תשובה נ׳ השיבה וכ׳ the congregation of Israel defeated the prophets with an irrefutable argument. e.g. Jeremiah 8:5

נֶצַח

preced.) success, endurance; (adv.) forever. Erub. 54ᵃ כל מקום שנאמר נ׳ וכ׳ wherever the Biblical text has the words netsaḥ, selah, or vaʿed, it means &c., v. הֶפְסֵק.—Pl. נְצָחִים. Midr. Till. to Ps. IV, v. נִיצּוּחַ.

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 18 distinct written forms H5329 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
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֥חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 4:1	17
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֗חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 11:1	11
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֬חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 36:1	8
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֣חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 6:1	5
לַ֭/מְנַצֵּחַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 9:1	5
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֤חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 18:1	2
לַ֝/מְנַצֵּ֗חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 40:1	2
וּ/מְנַצְּחִ֣ים	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute	2 Chronicles 2:2	1
וּֽ/מְנַצְּחִים֙	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute	2 Chronicles 34:13	1
לְ/נַצֵּ֑חַ	Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct	2 Chronicles 34:12	1
לְ/נַצֵּ֖חַ	Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct	Ezra 3:8	1
לְ/נַצֵּ֛חַ	Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct	Ezra 3:9	1
לְ/נַצֵּ֨חַ֙	Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct	1 Chronicles 23:4	1
לְ/נַצֵּֽחַ	Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct	1 Chronicles 15:21	1
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֖חַ	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Habakkuk 3:19	1
לַ/מְנַצֵּ֥ח	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute	Psalms 67:1	1
מְנַצְּחִ֖ים	Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute	2 Chronicles 2:18	1
נִצַּ֑חַת	Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute	Jeremiah 8:5	1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5329, 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.

נציח nᵉtsîyach H5335 Neziah

Compare all same-root words → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.

Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 60 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 61 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.