סָבָא
to drink heavily
‘to drink heavily’ 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.
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
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
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5433 appears in the Book of Proverbs — 2 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.
Proverbs
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.
“to drink heavily” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb סבא (çâbâʼ). It is rare — just 5 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. More than a third of its appearances fall in Proverbs. Its earliest occurrence is Proverbs 23:20. Its meaning spans more than one sense — see 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 H5433 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 60%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 40%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Drunkard 2×
- American Standard Version†: Drunkard 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Drunkard 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Among drinkers of much 1×, Being drunk 1×, Let us quaff 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5433 across 4† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5433 across 4† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5433 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H5433 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 1 sense 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.
סבא I imbibe, drink largely (NH id.
Qal
- Impf. 1 pl. cohort. נִסְבְּאָה Is 56:12; Pt. act. סֹבְא Dt 21:20; Pr 23:21; pl. סובאים Ez 23:42 Kt (Qr סָבָאִים, v. infr.); cstr. סֹבְאֵי Pr 23:20; pass. סְבוּאִים Na 1:10;—imbibe, c. acc. שֵׁכָר Is 56:12; pt. act. = subst. wine-bibber, drunkard Dt 21:20; Pr 23:21 (both + זוֹלֵל); fully, סֹבְאֵ׳ יָי֑ן 23:20 (+ זֹלֲלֵי בָשָׂר); so also Ez 23:42 Kt (Qr perhaps n.gent., so 𝔖 AV, v. infr.), which read Sm RV SgfrKau Da; Co thinks dittogr. of מוּבָאִים, but perhaps the reverse (ToyHpt om. מוּבָאִים); > Berthol (q.v.) מִסְּבָא; other conj. v. in Sm; וּכְסָבְאָם סְבוּאִים Na 1:10 is prob. corrupt, pt. pass. of person dub., and sense obscure; del. both as dittogr. GunkelZAW xiii (1893), 235 Now; om. in transl. We Kau. On Ho 4:18 v. סֹבֶא. e.g. Isaiah 56:12
סבא II only pl. סָבָאִים Ez 23
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
I. vb. imbibe, drink largely (NH id.; Aramaic סְבָא id. (rare); cf. Assyrian sabû, 3 DlHWB;—Arabic سَبْأٌ wine, is prob. loan-wd. and سَبَأَ import foreign wine denom., Frä 157 f.);—
II. only pl. סָבָאִים Ez 23:42 Qr =drunkards, wine-bibbers(?) so Thes al., but v. סְבָאִים.
— 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
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.
סָבָא II
- 1. pr. n. m. Saba. Y. Yeb. IX, beg. 10ᵃ ניחא בר ס׳; Y. Kil. IX, beg. 31ᵈ סָבָה.
- 2. כְּפַר ס׳ pr. n. pl. K’far Saba, in Samaria. Y. Dem. II, 22ᶜ bot. (ed. Krot. כפרסבא, one word). Nidd. 61ᵃ; Tosef. ib. VIII, 5 (v. Hildesh. Beitr., p. 10).
סָבָא III
- to drink freely.—Part. pass. סָבוּא, pl. סְבוּאִים, סְבוּאִין soaked, satiated. Nidd. 24ᵇ עצמותיו ס׳ Ar. (ed. סכויין) his bones are found satiated with moisture, i.e. porous, contrad. to משוחין oily, smooth.
סְבָא
- Part. סָבֵי. Targ. O. Deut. XXI, 20.—[Targ. I Sam. XXX, 20 וסבא some ed., read ושְׁבָא.].
- to retail wine in the shop or tavern. B. Bath. 98ᵃ אדעתא לסַבּוּיֵיה with the intention to retail it.
- to satiate, soak; trnsf. (cmp. סָפַג) to lash. Keth. 10ᵃ אַסְבּוּהוּ כופרי make him absorb (strike him with) palm switches. Ib. ומַסְבִּינָן ליה וכ׳ and we lash him nevertheless.
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 H5433 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְ/סֹֽבְאֵי | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Proverbs 23:20 | 1 |
| וְ/נִסְבְּאָ֣ה | Verb, Qal, Cohortative, 1st Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 56:12 | 1 |
| סְבוּאִ֑ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Nahum 1:10 | 1 |
| סָבָאִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 23:42 | 1 |
| סֹבֵ֣א | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 23:21 | 1 |
| סובאים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 23:42 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5433, 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 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
