נָשַׂג
to overtake
‘to overtake’ is one of 4 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘overtake’
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H5381 appears in the Book of Genesis — 4 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 31:25 וַ/יַּשֵּׂ֥ג conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms Laban caught up with Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountain, and Laban with his relatives encamped in the mountain of Gilead.
- Genesis 44:4 וְ/הִשַּׂגְתָּ/ם֙ conj + Hiphil wpf 2ms + sfx pers 3mp When they had gone out of the city, and were not yet far off, Joseph said to his steward, "Up, follow after the men. When you overtake them, ask them, 'Why have you rewarded evil for good?
- Genesis 44:6 וַֽ/יַּשִּׂגֵ֑/ם conj + Hiphil wimpf 3ms + sfx pers 3mp He overtook them, and he spoke to them these words.
- Genesis 47:9 הִשִּׂ֗יגוּ Hiphil pf 3cp Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage."
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.
נשג (nâsag) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to overtake.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “overtook” in the King James Version, “reaches” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 47 verses across 19 books, a moderately common footprint. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 31:25. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5381 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.
- 19 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 19 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #739
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 739 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 47 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Leviticus 11 verses 23%
- Genesis 4 verses 9%
- Deuteronomy 4 verses 9%
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.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 22 verses · 47%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 15 verses · 32%
- 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: Overtook 6×, Overtake 3×, Thee and overtake 3×
- American Standard Version: Overtake 5×, Overtook 4×, Shall reach 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Overtook 5×, He can afford 3×, Overtake 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Reaches 6×, And 4×, Does 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5381 across 45 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 27 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 5 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5381 across 45 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 30 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 H5381 across 47 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 21 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 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5381 across 65 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 30 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.
Hiphil
- 1. overtake
- 2.
- a. reach, attain
- b. cause to reach, bring, put
- 3. fig. one’s hand has reached, i.e. one is able, or has enough
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
[ נָשַׂג ] vb. only Hiph. reach, overtake
— 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
Forms in the corpus
The 47 distinct written forms H5381 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| תַּשִּׂ֖יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Ezekiel 46:7 | 4 |
| אַשִּׂ֖יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Exodus 15:9 | 1 |
| הִשִּׂ֖יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Zechariah 1:6 | 1 |
| הִשִּׂ֗יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Genesis 47:9 | 1 |
| הִשִּׂ֥יגָה | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 25:49 | 1 |
| הִשִּׂיג֖וּ/הָ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Lamentations 1:3 | 1 |
| הִשִּׂיג֣וּ/נִי | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 40:12 | 1 |
| הַֽ/אַשִּׂגֶ֑/נּוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | 1 Samuel 30:8 | 1 |
| הַשֵּׂ֥ג | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute | 1 Samuel 30:8 | 1 |
| וְ/אַשִּׂיגֵ֑/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Psalms 18:37 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂ֣יגָה | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 25:26 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂ֨יג | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Leviticus 26:5 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂגָ֨/נוּ֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 2 Samuel 15:14 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂיג֔וּ/ךָ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Deuteronomy 28:45 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂיג֛/וֹ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 19:6 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂיגֻ֑/ךָ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Deuteronomy 28:2 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשִּׂיגֽוּ/ךָ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Deuteronomy 28:15 | 1 |
| וְ/הִשַּׂגְתָּ/ם֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 44:4 | 1 |
| וְ/יַשֵּׂ֗ג | Verb, Hiphil, Jussive, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 7:5 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשִּׂ֣גוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 39:5 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשִּׂ֤יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Exodus 14:9 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשִּׂ֥גוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | 2 Kings 25:5 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשִּׂ֥יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 52:8 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשֵּׂ֥ג | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 31:25 | 1 |
| וַֽ/יַּשִּׂגֵ֑/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 44:6 | 1 |
| יַ֝שִּׂ֗יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Proverbs 2:19 | 1 |
| יַשִּׂ֑יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 24:2 | 1 |
| יַשִּׂ֔יגוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Isaiah 35:10 | 1 |
| יַשִּׂ֣יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Leviticus 26:5 | 1 |
| יַשִּׂיג֔וּ/ן | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Isaiah 51:11 | 1 |
| יַשִּׂיגֵֽ/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 69:24 | 1 |
| לְ/מַשֶּׂגֶת֒ | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 21:12 | 1 |
| מַשִּׂ֤יג | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 14:26 | 1 |
| מַשִּׂיגֵ֣/הוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Job 41:26 | 1 |
| מַשֶּׂגֶת֒ | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 14:21 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂ֗יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 25:47 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂ֣יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Hosea 2:7 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂ֥יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 14:32 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂ֨יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 5:11 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂיגֵ֖/נוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Isaiah 59:9 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂיגֵ֧/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Hosea 10:9 | 1 |
| תַשִּׂיגֽוּ/ם | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Joshua 2:5 | 1 |
| תַּשִּׂ֞יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 14:31 | 1 |
| תַּשִּׂ֣יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Numbers 6:21 | 1 |
| תַּשִּׂ֥יג | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Jeremiah 42:16 | 1 |
| תַּשִּׂיג֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 27:8 | 1 |
| תַּשִּׂיגֵ֣/הוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Job 27:20 | 1 |
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 31:25
- Exodus 14:9
- Leviticus 5:11
- Numbers 6:21
- Deuteronomy 19:6
- Joshua 2:5
- 1 Samuel 14:26
- 2 Samuel 15:14
- 2 Kings 25:5
- 1 Chronicles 21:12
- Job 24:2
- Psalms 7:5
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.
