נְקֵבָה
woman
‘woman’ is one of 3 main senses 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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5347 appears in the Book of Genesis — 6 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.
Genesis
- Genesis 1:27 וּ/נְקֵבָ֖ה conj + n c fs God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them.
- Genesis 5:2 וּ/נְקֵבָ֖ה conj + n c fs He created them male and female, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
- Genesis 6:19 וּ/נְקֵבָ֖ה conj + n c fs Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female.
- Genesis 7:3 וּ/נְקֵבָ֑ה conj + n c fs Also of the birds of the sky, seven and seven, male and female, to keep seed alive on the surface of all the earth.
- Genesis 7:9 וּ/נְקֵבָ֑ה conj + n c fs went by pairs to Noah into the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah.
- Genesis 7:16 וּ/נְקֵבָ֤ה conj + n c fs Those who went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him; and Yahweh shut him in.
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, נקבה (nᵉqêbâh) means “woman.” Its uses cluster heavily in Leviticus (55% of all occurrences). With 22 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. First canonically at Genesis 1:27, it enters the text early. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. 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 H5347 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 →
- 22
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,412
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,412 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 22 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 22 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 21 verses · 95%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 5%
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: Female 13×, Or female 3×, Woman 2×
- American Standard Version: Female 11×, Or female 3×, Woman 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Female 16×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Female 19×, A 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5347 across 22 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 H5347 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H5347 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H5347 across 23 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.
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 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.
- 1. woman (or female child) Je 31:22 (opp. גֶּבֶר), Gn 1:27; 5:2; Lv 12:5, 7; 15:33; 27:4, 5, 6, 7; Nu 5:3 (all opp. זָכָר), Nu 31:15. e.g. Jeremiah 31:22
- 2. female animal Gn 6:19; 7:3, 9, 16; Lv 3:1, 6 (all opp. זָכָר), 4:28, 32; 5:6.—Dt 4:16 (opp. זָכָר) may include both women and animals. e.g. Genesis 6:19
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.f. female (perforata (BaNB 166); so Thes and most; > another view in Schwally ZAW xi (1891), 181 f.; Idiot. 57; NH = BH; Aramaic נוּקְבָּא, נוּקְבְּתָא, ܢܶܩܒܳܐ, ܢܶܩܒܬܳܐ );—always abs. נ׳ Je 31:22 + 21 times (all Pent., and all P except Dt 4:16):
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נקב (nâqab) (H5344) — to pierce.
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.
נְקֵבָה
- preced. wds.) female sex, female; female gender. Nidd. III, 2, a. fr. תשב לנ׳ she must observe the laws of cleanness for the birth of a female child (Lev. XII, 5). Ib. 31ᵇ, v. נָקִי I; a. v. fr.—לשון נ׳ feminine gender. Kidd. 2ᵇ, v. זָכָר; a. fr.—Y. Yeb. VIII, end, 9ᵈ ממקום נ׳, v. next w.—Pl. נְקֵבוֹת, נְקֵי׳. Kidd. 82ᵇ; a. v. fr.—Succ. 12ᵇ חצין נ׳, v. חֵץ. e.g. Leviticus 12:5
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 14 distinct written forms H5347 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/נְקֵבָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 1:27 | 3 |
| נְקֵבָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 3:1 | 3 |
| וְ/לַ/נְּקֵבָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 27:7 | 2 |
| וּ/נְקֵבָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:3 | 2 |
| נְקֵבָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 31:22 | 2 |
| נְקֵבָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 4:16 | 2 |
| וְ/לַ/נְּקֵבָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 15:33 | 1 |
| וְ/לַ/נְּקֵבָ֣ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 27:6 | 1 |
| וּ/נְקֵבָ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:16 | 1 |
| לַ/נְּקֵבָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 12:7 | 1 |
| נְקֵבָ֣ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 12:5 | 1 |
| נְקֵבָ֥ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 4:32 | 1 |
| נְקֵבָ֨ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 5:6 | 1 |
| נְקֵבָה֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 5:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5347, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 22 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 22 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.
