נְקַשׁ
to knock
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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H5368 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
Daniel 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 word נקש centers on the idea of “to knock.” With only 1 verse it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. The word gravitates to Daniel (100%). Scripture uses it exactly once, at Daniel 5:6. 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 H5368 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 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: Smote 1×
- American Standard Version: Smote 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: not separately translated
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Knocked 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5368 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5368 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Does not render H5368 with a distinct English word (not separately translated in its 1 tagged occurrence).
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5368 across 1 tagged occurrence — 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.
- (Peal) to knock (of knees)
Word origin
[ נְקַשׁ ] vb. knock;— Pe. Dn 5:6
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נקש (nâqash) (H5367) — to strike.
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.
נָקַשׁ
- (v. קִשְׁקַשׁ I) to strike against; to touch closely. Bekh. VII, 6 (45ᵃ) (expl. עיקל) כל שמקיף … נוֹקְשׁוֹת וכ׳ (Mish. ed. נושקות) he whose legs do not touch each other when he puts his feet together. Meg. 12ᵇ, v. infra.
- 1. to cause striking against; to knock. Bekh. l. c. (44ᵇ) המַקִּישׁ בקרסוליו וכ׳ he who knocks his ankle-bones against each other (in walking, because his legs are bent outward), or rubs his legs against each other (his feet being bent outward). Midr. Sam. ch. IX מַקֶּשֶׁת ברגליה ומקשת בקרניה she knocks (creates a loud sound) with her feet and with her horns. Zab. IV, 1, sq. ה׳ על וכ׳ if he knocked against &c. Meg. 12ᵇ (play on בן קיש, Esth. II, 5) שה׳ על וכ׳ (Ms. M. שנָקַשׁ) he (Mordecai) knocked at the gates of mercy &c.; a. fr.—Esp. (cmp. נָגַן, נָכָה) to strike an instrument, play. Tam. VII, 3. Gen. R. s. 18 (play on הפעם, Gen. II, 23) עתידה להַקִּישׁ עלי כזוג (‘Rashi’: לקשקש) she is destined to be loud against me like a bell. Pesik. R. s. 31; Midr. Till. to Ps. CXXXVII אני מבקש שתעמדו ותַקִּישׁוּ … כדרך שהייתם מַקִּישִׁין וכ׳ I desire that you play on the cithern before me and the idol, as you played before your God. Ib. אנו עומדים להַקִּישׁ וכ׳ shall we stand playing before this dwarf (Nebuchadnezzar) and this idol? Midr. Till. to Ps. XCII, end (play on יקשן, Gen. XXV, 2) שהיו מקישין בתוף לעכו"ם they struck the timbrel before idols; Yalk. Chr. 1073; Gen. R. s. 61 מקשין בית׳ (corr. acc.).—2) (cmp. נָקַף) to bring under the same category by juxtaposition, to compare. Kidd. 5ᵃ, a. fr. (ref. to ויצאה a. והיתה in the same verse, Deut. XXIV, 2) מקיש הויה ליציאה, v. הֲוָיָה. Snh. 60ᵇ (ref. to Ex. XXII, 19 a. XXXIV, 14) זביחה בכלל … להַקִּישׁ אליה slaughtering for the idol would have been included in worshipping, and why is it singled out? To compare all other idolatrous functions with it: as slaughtering is a function performed inside &c. Zeb. 5ᵇ הִקִּישׁוֹ הכתוב וכ׳ the text (Lev. VII, 37) places it side by side with peace offerings; a. fr. e.g. Esther 2:5
- to be placed side by side, to be compared. Ker. 3ᵃ (ref. to Num. XV, 29, sq.) הוּקְּשָׁה כל התורה וכ׳ all the laws of the Torah are here placed on an equality with idolatry (as regards conditions of punishment). Ib. 2ᵇ הוּקְּשׁוּ כל העריות כולן וכ׳ all laws concerning incest are put on an equality with &c. (Lev. XVIII, 29); a. fr.—Part. מוּקָּשׁ. Gen. R. s. 35 (play on קשתי, Gen. IX, 13) דבר שהוא מ׳ לי something comparable with me (with the Divine Glory); Yalk. ib. 61; v. קִישׁוּת II. e.g. Numbers 15:29
נְקַשׁ
- , to strike against; to knock, drive in. Targ. II Esth. VI, 10, sq. Targ. Jud. IV, 21 (ed. Wil. נקיש׳); a. e.—Snh. 25ᵇ אנא ידענא למִנְקַשׁ וכ׳ Ar. (ed. לנַקּוּשֵׁי, Pa.; Rashi בנְקָשָׁא) I know better how to clap (at the pigeon-race). B. Kam. 52ᵇ איבעי ליה למיזיל ומִינְקַשׁ עליה it was his duty to go and knock upon it (to try the soundness of the board). B. Mets. 59ᵃ (prov.) כמִשְׁלַם … נָקֵישׁ ואזיל תיגרא when the barley is gone out of the pitcher, quarrel knocks and comes in; a. e.
- same, v. supra.
- 1. same. Y. B. Bath. IV, end, 15ᶜ; Y. Gitt. III, end, 45ᵇ מַקְּשִׁין על גרבא וכ׳ they knock at the vessel outside and know what is in it. Lev. R. s. 6 נסתיה … ואַקְּשֵׁיה לארעא he took the cane and knocked it against the floor; a. e.
- 2. to compare. Targ. Job XXX, 19 (sec. Vers.).—Zeb. 5ᵇ מאי חזית דאַקְּשַׁת … אַקְּשָׁהּ לחטאת (ed. אַקֵּישׁ) why do you compare it with peace offerings? Compare it with sin offerings; Yalk. Lev. 470. Snh. 15ᵃ לאַקּוּשֵׁי וכ׳ to place on an equal footing &c.; a. e.
- to be knocked together. Targ. Koh. XII, 3 (of the trembling hands of the age-stricken; h. text התעותו).
- to be set side by side, be compared. Pes. 61ᵃ (ref. to Ex. XII, 4) א׳ אוכלין למנויין those who partake of the Passover lamb are placed on an equal footing with those who are entered as shareholders, i.e. it must be slaughtered in behalf only of those entered and of such among them as are able to partake. Snh. 15ᵃ עבד א׳ לקרקעות a slave is classed with landed estate. Ib. 63ᵃ אִיתַּקּוּשֵׁי אִיתַּקּוּשׁ they (the bowing and the sacrificing to the idol) are legally alike; a. fr. e.g. Exodus 12:4
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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.
