נָשַׁל
to slip off
also: drop off, clear away, draw off fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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”). Here: ‘slip or drop off’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- 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”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (43%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (29%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5394 appears — 7 distinct verses across 4 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 1 verse
Deuteronomy 4 verses
- Deuteronomy 7:1 וְ/נָשַׁ֣ל conj + Qal wpf 3ms When Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you;
- Deuteronomy 7:22 וְ/נָשַׁל֩ conj + Qal wpf 3ms Yahweh your God will cast out those nations before you by little and little: you may not consume them at once, lest the animals of the field increase on you.
- Deuteronomy 19:5 וְ/נָשַׁ֤ל conj + Qal wpf 3ms as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand fetches a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the handle, and lights on his neighbor, so that he dies; he shall flee to one of these cities and live:
- Deuteronomy 28:40 יִשַּׁ֖ל Qal impf 3ms You shall have olive trees throughout all your borders, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olive shall cast [its fruit].
Joshua 1 verse
2 Kings 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.
נשל (nâshal) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to slip off.” Deuteronomy dominates its distribution — 4 of 7 verses. Spanning 7 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Exodus 3:5. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Piel, and more). For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5394 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 4 verses 57%
- Exodus 1 verse 14%
- Joshua 1 verse 14%
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 7 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 71%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 29%
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: Drave 1×, Hath cast out 1×, Loose 1×
- American Standard Version: Put off 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Take off 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5394 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5394 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 H5394 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H5394 across 10 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.
8 senses and sub-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 8 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. intrans. slip or drop off; also trans.:
- 2. draw off.
- 3. clear away (NH נָשַׁל prob. intrans., Qal not used, but n. נְשִׁילָה a falling off, etc.; Pi. Hiph. cast off, let fall off, Niph. be cast off, fall off; 𝔗 Aph. אַשֵּׁיל cast out (from house); Arabic نَسَلَ excidit pluma etc.; but also trans., avis mutavit rejecitque plumas (Frey);—نَشَلَ celeriter extraxit, etc., is denom. from loan-word according to Frä 88);—
Qal
- Pf. וְנָשַׁל consec. Dt 7:1 + 2 times; Impf. 3 ms. יִשַּׁל Dt 28:40; Imv. ms. שַׁל Ex 3:5 Jos 5:15;— e.g. Deuteronomy 7:1
- 1. slip or drop off, וְנָשַׁל הַבַּרְזֶל מִן־הָעֵץ Dt 19:5 and the iron slippeth off from the wood (i.e. axe-head from helve); יִשַּׁל זֵיתֶ֑ךָ Dt 28:40 thine olives shall drop off (abs.). e.g. Deuteronomy 19:5
- 2. draw off sandal from (מֵעַל) foot Ex 3:5 (E), Jos 5:15 (JE). e.g. Exodus 3:5
- 3. clear away nations מִפָּנֶיךָ Dt 7:1, 22. e.g. Deuteronomy 7:1
Piel
- Impf. 3 ms. וַיְנַשֵּׁל 2 K 16:6 he cleared the Jews entirely out of (מִן) Elath. e.g. 2 Kings 16:6
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
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.
נָשַׁל
- 1. to strike off, chip. Tosef. Macc. II, 6 נ׳ הברזל מן העץ המתבקע if the iron (axe) chipped a piece off the wood which was to be split (and the chip struck a person dead); v. נְשִׁילָה.
- 2. to slip off, fall off. Lev. R. s. 22 נָשְׁלוּ איבריו his limbs fell off (by decay; Gen. R. s. 10 נָשְׁרוּ; Koh. R. to V, 8 נשרן, נשרין, ch.). Macc. 7ᵇ ונָשַׁל קרינן, v. infra.
- to strike off, to cause chips to fly off. Ib. ונִישֵּׁל כתיב v’nashal (Deut. XIX, 5) may be read v’nishshel (Pi.) and the iron chips off a part of the wood &c., v. supra; ונָשַׁל קרינן the traditional reading is v’nashal, and the iron slips out of the helve (v. אֵם). e.g. Deuteronomy 19:5
- to fall off, decay. Lev. R. s. 37, end שהיה נ׳ ממנו אבר אבר וכ׳ limb after limb fell off his body and was buried each in a different place; ib. נ׳ אבר אבר; Koh. R. to X, 15; Gen. R. s. 60. Num. R. s. 9 יהא בשרה נ׳ her flesh (limbs) shall fall off; a. e.
- to let fall, drop. Bets. V, 1 מַשִּׁילִין פירות וכ׳ you may let down fruit (that was spread on the roof) through the aperture &c.; (versions ib. 35ᵇ: משחילין, משירין, מנשירין, משחירין).
*נְשַׁל
- Af. אַשֵּׁיל to send off. Targ. Y. Deut. XXIV, 1 ed. pr. (oth. ed. וִיטַיֵּיל; h. text ושלחה).
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 6 distinct written forms H5394 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5394, 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 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
