אֶבְיָתָר
Abiathar
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Abiathar’ 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.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H54 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 9 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.
1 Kings
- 1 Kings 1:7 אֶבְיָתָ֣ר n Proper He conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar the priest: and they following Adonijah helped him.
- 1 Kings 1:19 וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָר֙ conj + prep + n Proper and he has slain oxen and fatlings and sheep in abundance, and has called all the sons of the king, and Abiathar the priest, and Joab the captain of the host; but he hasn't called Solomon your servant.
- 1 Kings 1:25 וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֣ר conj + prep + n Proper For he is gone down this day, and has slain oxen and fatlings and sheep in abundance, and has called all the king's sons, and the captains of the host, and Abiathar the priest; and, behold, they are eating and drinking before him, and say, [Long] live king Adonijah.
- 1 Kings 1:42 אֶבְיָתָ֥ר n Proper While he yet spoke, behold, Jonathan the son of Abiathar the priest came: and Adonijah said, Come in; for you are a worthy man, and bring good news.
- 1 Kings 2:22 וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֣ר conj + prep + n Proper King Solomon answered his mother, Why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.
- 1 Kings 2:26 וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֨ר conj + prep + n Proper To Abiathar the priest said the king, Get you to Anathoth, to your own fields; for you are worthy of death: but I will not at this time put you to death, because you bear the ark of the Lord Yahweh before David my father, and because you were afflicted in all in which my father was afflicted.
- 1 Kings 2:27 אֶבְיָתָ֔ר n Proper So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest to Yahweh, that he might fulfill the word of Yahweh, which he spoke concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh.
- 1 Kings 2:35 אֶבְיָתָֽר n Proper The king put Benaiah the son of Jehoiada in his room over the host; and Zadok the priest did the king put in the room of Abiathar.
- 1 Kings 4:4 וְ/אֶבְיָתָ֖ר conj + n Proper and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was over the host; and Zadok and Abiathar were priests;
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.
אביתר — transliterated ʼEbyâthâr — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Abiathar.” Debuting at 1 Samuel 22:20, it then recurs through the corpus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 28 verses — moderately common. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in 2 Samuel. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H54 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 →
- 28
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 28 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,139
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,139 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 28 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 28 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 24 verses · 86%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 14%
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: Abiathar 26×
- American Standard Version: Abiathar 24×
- Berean Standard Bible: Abiathar 26×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abiathar 29×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H54 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H54 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H54 across 29 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H54 across 30 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 2 senses 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.
- Abiathar = "my father is great"
- priest, son of Ahitub (Ahimelech), faithful to David, but later rebelled with Adonijah
Word origin
n.pr.m. (the Great One is father (?) so BäRel. 156, cf. Sab. ותר) a priest, son of Ahimelech 1 S 22:20, 21, 22; 23:6, 9; 30:7(×2) 2 S 8:17 (read אב׳ בן־אחמלך so 𝔖 We Dr) + 22 times 2 S 1 K 1 Ch.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אב (ʼâb) (H1) — father.
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.
אֶבְיָתָר
- (b. h.) pr. n. m. Ebyathar, an Amora. Git. 6ᵇ. Y. Ber. IX, 13ᵃ
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 19 distinct written forms H54 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶבְיָתָ֖ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 18:16 | 3 |
| וְ/אֶבְיָתָ֖ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 4:4 | 3 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֑ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 22:20 | 2 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֔ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 24:6 | 2 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֛ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 30:7 | 2 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֣ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 1:7 | 2 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֥ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 1:42 | 2 |
| וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֖ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 15:11 | 2 |
| וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֣ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 1:25 | 2 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֤ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 30:7 | 1 |
| אֶבְיָתָ֧ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 23:6 | 1 |
| אֶבְיָתָֽר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 2:35 | 1 |
| אֶבְיָתָר֙ | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 17:15 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶבְיָתָ֔ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 27:34 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶבְיָתָ֛ר | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 15:29 | 1 |
| וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֨ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 2:26 | 1 |
| וּ/לְ/אֶבְיָתָר֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 1:19 | 1 |
| לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֑ר | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 15:36 | 1 |
| לְ/אֶבְיָתָ֗ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 22:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H54, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- אבי ʼĂbîy H21 Abi
- אביאל ʼĂbîyʼêl H22 Abiel
- אביאסף ʼĂbîyʼâçâph H23 Abiasaph
- אבי גבעון ʼĂbîy Gibʻôwn H25 father of Gibeon
- אביגיל ʼĂbîygayil H26 Abigail
- אבידן ʼĂbîydân H27 Abidan
- אבידע ʼĂbîydâʻ H28 Abida
- אביה ʼĂbîyâh H29 Abijah
- אביהוא ʼĂbîyhûwʼ H30 Abihu
- אביהוד ʼĂbîyhûwd H31 Ahihud
- אביהיל ʼĂbîyhayil H32 Abihail
- אביטוב ʼĂbîyṭûwb H36 Abitub
- אביטל ʼĂbîyṭâl H37 Abital
- אבים ʼĂbîyâm H38 Abijam
- אבימאל ʼĂbîymâʼêl H39 Abimael
- אבימלך ʼĂbîymelek H40 Abimelech
- אבינדב ʼĂbîynâdâb H41 Abinadab
- אבינעם ʼĂbîynôʻam H42 Abinoam
- אביעזר ʼĂbîyʻezer H44 Abiezer
- אביעלבון ʼĂbîy-ʻalbôwn H45 Abialbon
- אבירם ʼĂbîyrâm H48 Abiram
- אבישג ʼĂbîyshag H49 Abishag
- אבישוע ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ H50 Abishua
- אבישור ʼĂbîyshûwr H51 Abishur
- Αβιαθαρ Abiathár G8 Abiathar
+6 more proper names from this root (not shown).
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 35 — not the complete family. 31 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Abiathar). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Father of abundance, or my father excels, the son of Ahimelech the high priest. He was the tenth high priest, and the fourth in descent from Eli. When his father was slain with the priests of Nob, he escaped, and bearing with him the ephod, he joined David, who was then in the cave of Adullam (1 Sam. 22:20-23; 23:6). He remained with David, and became priest of the party of which he was the leader (1 Sam. 30:7). When David ascended the throne of Judah, Abiathar was appointed high priest (1 Chr. 15:11; 1 Kings 2:26) and the "king's companion" (1 Chr. 27:34). Meanwhile Zadok, of the house of Eleazar, had been made high priest. These appointments continued in force till the end of David's reign (1 Kings 4:4). Abiathar was deposed (the sole historical instance of the deposition of a high priest) and banished to his home at Anathoth by Solomon, because he took part in the attempt to raise Adonijah to the throne. The priesthood thus passed from the house of Ithamar (1 Sam. 2:30-36; 1 Kings 1:19; 2:26, 27). Zadok now became sole high priest. In Mark 2:26, reference is made to an occurrence in "the days of Abiathar the high priest." But from 1 Sam. 22, we learn explicitly that this event took place when Ahimelech, the father of Abiathar, was high priest. The apparent discrepancy is satisfactorily explained by interpreting the words in Mark as referring to the life-time of Abiathar, and not to the term of his holding the office of high priest. It is not implied in Mark that he was actual high priest at the time referred to. Others, however, think that the loaves belonged to Abiathar, who was at that time (Lev. 24:9) a priest, and that he either himself gave them to David, or persuaded his father to give them.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(father of abundance, i.e. liberal), High priest and fourth in descent from Eli. (B.C. 1060-1012.) Abiathar was the only one of the all the sons of Ahimelech the high priest who escaped the slaughter inflicted upon his father's house by Saul, in revenge for his father's house by Saul, in revenge of his having inquired of the Lord for David and given him the shew-bread to eat. (1 Samuel 22:1) ... Abiathar having become high priest fled to David, and was thus enabled to inquire of the Lord for him. (1 Samuel 23:9; 30:7; 2 Samuel 2:1; 5:19) etc. He adhered to David in his wanderings while pursued by Saul; he was with him while he reigned in Hebron, and afterwards in Jerusalem. (2 Samuel 2:1-3) He continued faithful to him in Absalom's rebellion. (2 Samuel 15:24,29,35,36; 17:15-17; 19:11) When, however, Adonijah set himself up fro David's successor on the throne, in opposition to Solomon, Abiathar sided with him, while Zadok was on Solomon's side. For this Abiathar was deprived of the high priesthood. Zadok had joined David at Hebron, (1 Chronicles 12:28) so that there was henceforth who high priests in the reign of David, and till the deposition of Abiathar by Solomon, when Zadok became the sole high priest.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
excellent father; father of the remnant
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 28 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 28 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.
