סַבָּל
bearer
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 4 times (80%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5449 appears — 5 distinct verses across 3 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.
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 3 verses
- 2 Chronicles 2:2 סַבָּ֔ל n c ms Solomon counted out seventy thousand men to bear burdens, and eighty thousand men who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them.
- 2 Chronicles 2:18 סַבָּ֔ל n c ms He set seventy thousand of them to bear burdens, and eighty thousand who were stone cutters in the mountains, and three thousand six hundred overseers to set the people at work.
- 2 Chronicles 34:13 הַ/סַּבָּלִ֗ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Also they were over the bearers of burdens, and set forward all who did the work in every manner of service: and of the Levites there were scribes, and officers, and porters.
Nehemiah 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.
“bearer” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun סבל (çabbâl). The Hebrew Bible uses it only 5 verses. It clusters heavily in 2 Chronicles, which alone accounts for 60% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in 1 Kings 5:15. From the same root come סבל, סבל and סבל. See the sense tree, 5-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5449 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.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 3 verses 60%
- 1 Kings 1 verse 20%
- Nehemiah 1 verse 20%
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.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 80%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 20%
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: Be bearers of burdens 1×, Bear burdens 1×, Bearers of burdens 1×
- American Standard Version: Bear burdens 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Porters 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Burden bearers 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5449 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5449 across 5 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5449 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5449 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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.
- burden-bearer
Word origin
n.[m.] burden-bearer, (late);—only abs. ס׳ coll. Ne 4:4; 2 Ch 2:1, 17; mpl. abs. סַבָּלִים 2 Ch 34:13;—נֹשֵׂא סַבָּל 1 K 5:29 is certainly wrong; 𝔊 αἴροντες ἄρσιν, 𝔙 qui onera portabant, hence prob. נֹשֵׂא סֵ֫בֶל; > אִישׁ סַבָּל, as ‖ 2 Ch 2:1.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from סבל (çâbal) (H5445) — to bear.
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.
סָבַל
- (b. h.) to carry a load; to sustain; to endure. Lev. R. s. 4, end הנפש הזו סוֹבֶלֶת … והקב"ה סוֹבֵל את עולמו the soul supports the body, and the Lord sustains his world; (Tanḥ. Ḥayé 3 משמרת … משמר). Pes. 113ᵇ ארבעה אין … סוֹבַלְתָּן there are four things which the mind (of man) cannot endure. Gen. R. s. 22 (ref. to Gen. IV, 13) לעליונים … אתה סובל ולפשעי אין אתה סובל thou bearest those on high and those below, and my trespass thou wilt not bear? Y. R. Hash. II, end, 58ᵇ (ref. to Ps. CXLIV, 14 אלופינו מסבלים) בשעה שהגדולים סוֹבְלִין את וכ׳ when the great bear the small (take care of them), there is no breach &c.; ib. בשעה שהקטנים סובלין וכ׳ when the small bear the great (respect their superiority), there is &c.; Yalk. Ps. 888; Ruth R. introd. (ושם). Ex. R. s. 5 סָבְלוּ מכות they endured maltreatment; a. fr.—Y. Peah I, 16ᵇ הפורק … ואיני סוֹבְלָהּ he who throws off the yoke, that is, he who says, there is a law, but I will not bear it. e.g. Genesis 4:13
- to load. Part. pass. מְסוּבָּל. Ber. 17ᵃ (ref. to Ps. l. c.) מְסוּבָּלִים במצות laden with good deeds; מס׳ בייסורים laden with pains. Yalk. Deut. 963 מסובלים כספם וכ׳ (Deut. R. s. 11 היו סובלים) carrying their silver and their gold; a. e.
סְבַל
- Targ. Y. Deut. XXXII, 11. Targ. Job XXI, 3. Targ. Y. II, Deut. XXIV, 15; a. fr.—Cant. R. to V, 14 למִיסְבַּל, v. סִבְנִי. Gen. R. s. 38 דסָבֵיל רוחא, v. רוּחָא; a. e.
- (v. סִבָּלוֹן) to send presents of betrothal. Kidd. 50ᵇ מְסַבְּלֵי והדר מקדשי where it is customary to send the presents before betrothal; a. e.
סַבָּל
- preced.) load-carrier. Y. B. Mets. X, end, 12ᶜ; (Bab. ib. 118ᵇ כַּתָּף). Kidd. 82ᵇ; Y. ib. IV, end, 66ᵈ; Tosef. ib. V, 15 (ed. Zuck. note). Tanḥ., ed. Bub., M’tsora 11 בריאים כסַבָּלוֹ של עולם as strong as he who carries the world; Yalk. Ps. 808.—Pl. סַבָּלִין. Kel. XXVIII, 9 כסת הס׳ the cushion which load-carriers wear on their heads.
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 4 distinct written forms H5449 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| סַבָּ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 2:2 | 2 |
| הַ/סַּבָּ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Nehemiah 4:10 | 1 |
| הַ/סַּבָּלִ֗ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 34:13 | 1 |
| סַבָּ֑ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 5:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5449, 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.
Derives from
Shares the same root
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 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.
