סוּג
to backslide
‘to backslide’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”). Here: ‘refl. turn oneself away’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms 9 distinct
- Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 4 times (29%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 2 times (14%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (14%)
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (7%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (7%)
+1 more form (1 occurrence)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 14 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5472 appears — 14 distinct verses across 5 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.
Psalms 8 verses
- Psalms 35:4 יִסֹּ֣גוּ Niphal impf 3mp Let those who seek after my soul be disappointed and brought to dishonor. Let those who plot my ruin be turned back and confounded.
- Psalms 40:14 יִסֹּ֣גוּ Niphal impf 3mp Let them be disappointed and confounded together who seek after my soul to destroy it. Let them be turned backward and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt.
- Psalms 44:18 נָס֣וֹג Niphal pf 3ms Our heart has not turned back, Neither have our steps strayed from your path,
- Psalms 53:3 סָג֮ Qal pf 3ms Every one of them has gone back. They have become filthy together. There is no one who does good, no, not one.
- Psalms 70:2 יִסֹּ֣גוּ Niphal impf 3mp Let them be disappointed and confounded who seek my soul. Let those who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace.
- Psalms 78:57 וַ/יִּסֹּ֣גוּ conj + Niphal wimpf 3mp But turned back, and dealt treacherously like their fathers. They were turned aside like a deceitful bow.
- Psalms 80:18 נָס֥וֹג Qal impf 1cp So we will not turn away from you. Revive us, and we will call on your name.
- Psalms 129:5 וְ/יִסֹּ֣גוּ conj + Niphal impf 3mp Let them be disappointed and turned backward, All those who hate Zion.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 38:22 נָסֹ֥גוּ Niphal pf 3cp behold, all the women who are left in the king of Judah's house shall be brought forth to the king of Babylon's princes, and those women shall say, Your familiar friends have set you on, and have prevailed over you: [now that] your feet are sunk in the mire, they are turned away back.
- Jeremiah 46:5 נְסֹגִ֣ים Niphal ptcp.act mp Why have I seen it? they are dismayed and are turned backward; and their mighty ones are beaten down, and have fled apace, and don't look back: terror is on every side, says Yahweh.
Zephaniah 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.
“to backslide” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb סוג (çûwg). More than half of its appearances fall in Psalms. It appears 14 verses across 5 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Psalms 35:4, it enters the text early. The verb spans 5 stems, from Qal to Niphal. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5472 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 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 14 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 9 verses · 64%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 36%
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†: Let them be turned 2×, Turned 2×
- American Standard Version†: Let them be turned 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Be repelled 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Be turned 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5472 across 14† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5472 across 14† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H5472 across 14† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H5472 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
11 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. This entry also uses Hophal (the passive of Hiphil) and one or more reduplicated stems (the Pōlēl/Pilpēl type), which for hollow or geminate roots behave much like Piel — often intensive or iterative.
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 11 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.
סוג I move away, backslide (שׂ׳ erron.
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. סָג ψ 53:4; Impf. 1 pl. נָסוֹג ψ 80:19; Pt. act. cstr. סוּג Pr 14:14 (BaNB § 124 c Ges§ § 50 f, 72 p);—backslide, prove recreant to י׳, c. מִן ψ 80:19; so abs. 53:4; סוּג לֵב Pr 14:14 a backslider in heart. e.g. Psalms 53:4
Niphal
- Pf. 3 ms. נָסוֹג ψ 44:19, נָשׂוֹג 2 S 1:22 (שׂ for ס); 1 s. נְסוּגֹתִי Is 50:5; 3 pl. נָסֹ֫גוּ Is 42:17 Je 38:22; Impf. 3 ms. יִסַּג Mi 2:6 (Ges§ 72 dd, but v. infr.); 3 mpl. יִסֹּ֫גוּ ψ 35:4 + 3 times, וַיִּסֹּ֫גוּ ψ 78:57; Inf. abs. נָסוֹג Is 59:13; Pt. pl. נְסוֹגִים Zp 1:6 Je 46:5;— e.g. Psalms 44:19
- 1. refl. turn oneself away, turn back:
- a. lit. of Jonathan’s bow 2 S 1:22, c. מִן (v HPS). e.g. 2 Samuel 1:22
- b. fig. = prove faithless (as Qal): (1) of human friends, נס׳ אָחוֹר Je 38:22 (abs.); usually (2) נס׳ מֵאַחֲרֵי י׳ Zp 1:6 cf. Is 59:13; so abs. ψ 78:57 (+ בָּגַד), c. אָחוֹר Is 50:5 (‖ מָרִיתִי), ψ 44:19 (‖ נָטָה מִן).—לֹא יִסַּג כְּלִמּוֹת Mi 2:6 could mean reproaches do not depart, i.e. cease (Hi-St Che GASm Now RV); Now proposes also (emending foll. v.) shall not disgrace depart from Jacob’s house? BuhlLex 13 conj., plausibly, יַשִּׂיג (√ נשׂג) disgrace shall not overtake us. e.g. Jeremiah 38:22
- 2. be turned or driven back, be repulsed, of י׳’s foes: + אָחוֹר Je 46:5; Is 42:17 ψ 35:4; 40:15 = 70:3, 129:5. e.g. Jeremiah 46:5
Hiphil
- 1. usually of displacing, moving back a boundary mark (גְּבוּל), Impf. 2 ms. תַּסִּיג Dt 19:14, juss. תַּסֵּג Pr 22:28; 23:10; 3 mpl. יַשִּׂיגוּ Jb 24:2 (שׂ for ס); Pt. מַסִּיג ג׳ Dt 27:17, מַסִּיגֵי ג׳ Ho 5:10. e.g. Deuteronomy 19:14
- 2. remove, carry away, valuables, to rescue them, juss., 2 ms. תַּסֵּג Mi 6:14 si vera l. (on synt. v. Dr§ § 152, 1. 2; 155 Obs.). e.g. Micah 6:14
Hophal
- Pf. 3 ms. וְהֻסַּג אָחוֹר מִשְׁפָּט Is 59:14 and justice is driven back (‖ צְדָקָה מֵרָחוֹק תַּעֲמֹד). e.g. Isaiah 59:14
סוג II fence about (Aramaic word
Qal
- Pt. pass. f. בִּטְנֵךְ עֲרֵמַת חִטִּים סוּגָה בַּשּׁוֹשַׁנִּים Ct 7:3 thy body a heap of wheat fenced about with lilies (cf. especially De Bu). e.g. Song of Solomon 7:3
Pilp
- intens. Impf. 2 fs. תְּשַׂגְֿשֵׂ֑גִי Is 17:11 thou dost fence it carefully about (> make it grow, as if שׂוג = שׂגה, AE Ki Brd Du). e.g. Isaiah 17:11
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. move away, backslide (שׂ׳ erron.; Arabic ((سوج), سَاجَ), go and come Lane 1459, سَوْجَانٌ abitus et adventus Frey (Kam.));—
II. vb. fence about (Aramaic word; ܣܘܓ, ܣܳܓ sepsit, circumsepsit, clausit, ܣܝܳܓܳܐ sepes, cf. 𝔗 סיג Pa. fence about, סְיָיגָא fence; NH סוג fence about; Arabic سَيَاجٌ enclosure made with thorns, etc., around grape-vines, etc. Lane1460, سوّج ii. make a سِيَاجٌ );—only
— 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.
סוּג I
- (b. h.) [to cut off, separate,] to fence in, mark off. Y. Ab. Zar. IV, 43ᶜ, sq. כל שהוא סָג וכ׳ any stone that is put up to mark the sea-shore or the roads. Y. M. Kat. I, 80ᶜ פירצה שהיא סָגָה וכ׳ a fence which, though broken, still bars the ground behind it (from falling out); Y. Shebi. III, end, 34ᵈ; a. e.—Trnsf. (v. סְיָג a. גָּדַר) to guard against trespassing a law, to make a prohibition more restrictive; to exaggerate. Ab. d’R. N. ch. I סייג שסָג … לדבריו (v. ed. Schechter) the guard which Adam set to his words (by adding the prohibition to touch the tree of knowledge). Ib. אם סג אדם לדבריו וכ׳ if a person exaggerates his words, he cannot abide by them.
- to fence in. Part. pass. מְסוּיָּיג. Koh. R. to V, 14 והיה מס׳ וכ׳ it (the vineyard) was fenced in on all sides.
- (with גְּבוּל) to remove the landmark. Sabb. 85ᵃ (ref. to Deut. XIX, 14) גבול … לא תַסִּיג do not remove the landmark which those before thee (the Canaanites) have set. e.g. Deuteronomy 19:14
סוּג
- Targ. II Esth. III, 3 סָג יתיה (not סגיתיה).—Part. סָיֵיג, סָיֵג. Targ. Hos. II, 8 כמא דסַיְגִין (missing in ed. Lag.).—Y. M. Kat. III, 83ᶜ top יְסוּג תורעתך may the Lord fence in thy breach (guard thee from further trouble); Gen. R. s. 100. Y. Kidd. I, end, 61ᵈ; Y. Shebu. II, end, 33ᶜ, a. e. סָיְיגִין סייגה ותרעין וכ׳ a fence is fenced around, and a breach broken into, i.e. the good are assisted by Providence in their good work, and the bad in their evil ways; וכיני סייגין וכ׳ (not ובני) but is it right that the fence &c.?; Yalk. Prov. 935 סגיי סוגייא (corr. acc.).
סוּג II
- (preced.) [partition,] a large chest or basket with partitions for various kinds of provision. Dem. V, 6 אפי׳ מאותו הס׳ וכ׳ even if he buys the second time from the same chest and of the same kind (quality). Y. B. Kam. II, 3ᵃ ס׳ שנתון וכ׳ a dealer’s chest which stands at the entrance of the shop; a. e.—Pl. סוּגִים, סוּגִין. Kel. XVI, 3 הס׳ הגדולים (R. S. a. l. Var. סוֹאִין; Tosef. Kel. B. Mets. V, 3; 13 הסאין, v. סוֹי) the large provision chests; Sifra Sh’mini ch. VII, Par. 6 סיגים (corr. acc.). Y. Sabb. XVII, 16ᵃ bot.; a. e.—[In later philosophical literature: סוּג class, species.—[Midr. Till. to Ps. CXIX, 119 עושה סוגים, v. סִיג I.]
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 12 distinct written forms H5472 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִסֹּ֣גוּ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 35:4 | 3 |
| הַ/נְּסוֹגִ֖ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Zephaniah 1:6 | 1 |
| וְ/יִסֹּ֣גוּ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 129:5 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּסֹּ֣גוּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 78:57 | 1 |
| נְסֹגִ֣ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 46:5 | 1 |
| נְסוּגֹֽתִי | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Isaiah 50:5 | 1 |
| נָס֣וֹג | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 44:18 | 1 |
| נָס֥וֹג | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 80:18 | 1 |
| נָסֹ֤גוּ | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 42:17 | 1 |
| נָסֹ֥גוּ | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Jeremiah 38:22 | 1 |
| ס֣וּג | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Proverbs 14:14 | 1 |
| סָג֮ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 53:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5472, 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 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
