נְשַׁר
eagle
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (50%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (50%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 2 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5403 appears — 2 distinct verses 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 2 verses
- Daniel 4:33 כְּ/נִשְׁרִ֥ין prep + n c mp The same hour was the thing fulfilled on Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and ate grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the sky, until his hair was grown like eagles' [feathers], and his nails like birds' [claws].
- Daniel 7:4 נְשַׁ֖ר n c ms The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I saw until the wings of it were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand on two feet as a man; and a man's heart was given to it.
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.
נשר (nᵉshar) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “eagle.” With only 2 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. It clusters heavily in Daniel, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. It first appears in Daniel 4:33. 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 H5403 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 2 verses 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 2 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 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: Had eagle's 1×, Like eagles' 1×
- American Standard Version: Had eagle 1×, Like eagles 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Eagle 1×, Like an eagle 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Eagle 1×, Like the feathers of eagles 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5403 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5403 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5403 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5403 across 2 tagged occurrences — 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.
- eagle, vulture, griffon-vulture
Word origin
נְשַׁר n.m. griffon-vulture or eagle
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נשר (nesher) (H5404) — eagle.
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.
נָשַׁר
- (cmp. נָשַׁל) to drop, fall off. Peah VII, 3 איזהו פרט הנוֹשֵׁר וכ׳ by pereṭ (Lev. XIX, 10) is understood that which drops on cutting grapes. Bets. 2ᵇ פירות הנוֹשְׁרִין fruit which drops from the tree (on the Holy Day). Y. ib. I, beg. 60ᵃ ספק מהיום נָשְׁרוּ וכ׳ where it is doubtful whether they fell off to-day (on the Holy-Day) &c. Gen. R. s. 10, v. נָשַׁל; a. fr.—Sabb. XXII, 4 (146ᵇ) מי שנשרו כליו בדרך (במים) if one’s garments (cloak) fell into a puddle on the road. e.g. Leviticus 19:10
- (הִנְשִׁיר)
- 1. to let fall, drop. Ib. 67ᵃ אילן שמַשִּׁיר פירותיו a tree that drops its fruit prematurely. Naz. VI, 3 מפני שמַשֶּׁרֶת וכ׳ because it causes falling out of the hair. Y. Peah VIII, 20ᵃ bot. מַשִּׁיר (not משייר), v. מַחֲבוֹא. Midr. Till. to Ps. XIV עתיד … להַשִּׁירוֹ the Lord will cause him to drop, v. נוֹבֶלֶת. Keth. 6ᵇ אע"פ שמַשִּׁיר צרורות although (by walking through the breach) he causes pebbles to break loose; Y. Ber. II, 5ᵇ top אפי׳ מַשֶּׁרֶת צרורות even if the wall is so brittle as to drop &c.; a. fr.—Bets. 35ᵇ מַשִּׁירִין, מַנְשִׁירִין (prob. to be read: מְנַשְּׁרִין as versions of מַשִּׁילִין, v. נָשַׁל).—Esth. R. to I, 14 ומַשִּׁירָן, v. כַּרְשׁינָה II.
- 1. to drop, let drop, v. supra.
- 2. (cmp. Assyr. našâru, Del. Assyr. Handw., p. 487) to tear, lacerate. Ab. Zar. 11ᵃ sq. איזהו עיקור … המְנַשֵּׁר פרסותיה וכ׳ what mutilation of an animal’s feet does not affect its vitality (v. טְרֵפָה)? Cutting the tendons of its hoofs beneath the ankle; ib. 13ᵃ. Pesik. R. s. 31 מְנַשְּׁרִים בשערו they pluck his hair.
נְשַׁר I
- 1. to fall off. Koh. R. to V, 8 נַשְׁרִין, נַשְׁרָן, v. נָשַׁל.
- 2. to lacerate. Ber. 8ᵃ [a gloss, v. Ar. ed. Koh. s. v. נשר 4] דלאחורי נַשְׁרָא (Ar. נָשְׁרֵי) which tears backwards (when you attempt to pull it out), v. חִיזְרָא I.
- to cause to fall off, drop. Targ. I Chr. V, 23, v. סְרֵי II.
נֶשֶׁר I
- (preced.) dropping, dropped fruit. Succ. I, 3 מפני הנ׳ to intercept the droppings (from the branches covering the Succah). Pes. 56ᵃ להאכיל נ׳ לעניים וכ׳ to give the poor an opportunity to eat of the fallen fruit (on Sabbaths &c.) in years of famine; Men. 71ᵃ; a. fr.—Pl. נְשָׁרִים, נְשָׁרִין. Tosef. Pes. II (III), 19. Y. Bets. I, bg. 60ᵃ; a. e.
נֶשֶׁר II
- (v. נָשַׁרPi.) eagle. Ḥag. 13ᵇ מּלך שבעופות נ׳ the king of birds is the eagle. Ḥull. 60ᵇ sq. (ref. to Lev. XI, 13) נ׳ מה נ׳ וכ׳ the text specifies the eagle to intimate, as the eagle has no additional toe …, so all birds like him are unclean. Y. Peah I, 15ᵈ top נ׳ שהוא רחמן the eagle who is kind (to his young ones); Yalk. Prov. 963. Mekh. Yithro, Baḥod., s. 2; a. fr.—Snh. 12ᵃ (in a secret letter) ותפשו נ׳ and the eagle (Roman) caught them (the messengers, v. נְצִיב).—Pl. נְשָׁרִים. Ib. 92ᵇ עושה להם כנפים כנ׳ וכ׳ he shall give them (the righteous) wings like those of the eagles, and they shall soar &c.; a. e. e.g. Leviticus 11:13
נְשַׁר II
- 1. same. Targ. Lev. XI, 13; a. fr.—Pl. נִשְׁרִין, נִשְׁרַיָּא, נִי׳. Targ. Ex. XIX, 4. Targ. II Sam. I, 23.—Erub. 53ᵇ, v. נְקַף I.
- 2. Nishra, name of an Arabian deity (Sabaean: Nasr). Ab. Zar. 11ᵇ.—[נשרא, Ber. 8ᵃ, v. נְשַׁר I.]—קַן נִשְׁרַיָּיא pr. n. pl., v. קֵן ch.
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 2 distinct written forms H5403 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| כְּ/נִשְׁרִ֥ין | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 4:33 | 1 |
| נְשַׁ֖ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 7:4 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
