סָלַח
to forgive
‘to forgive’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
- Preposition
- A relational word (e.g. “in,” “to,” “from”) governing a noun.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- 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”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5545 appears in the Book of Numbers — 8 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.
Numbers
- Numbers 14:19 סְלַֽח Qal impv 2ms Pardon, Please, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and according as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.
- Numbers 14:20 סָלַ֖חְתִּי Qal pf 1cs Yahweh said, I have pardoned according to your word:
- Numbers 15:25 וְ/נִסְלַ֣ח conj + Niphal pf 3ms The priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the children of Israel, and they shall be forgiven; for it was an error, and they have brought their offering, an offering made by fire to Yahweh, and their sin-offering before Yahweh, for their error:
- Numbers 15:26 וְ/נִסְלַ֗ח conj + Niphal pf 3ms and all the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, and the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them; for in respect of all the people it was done unwittingly.
- Numbers 15:28 וְ/נִסְלַ֥ח conj + Niphal pf 3ms The priest shall make atonement for the soul who errs, when he sins unwittingly, before Yahweh, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven.
- Numbers 30:5 יִֽסְלַח Qal impf 3ms But if her father disallow her in the day that he hears, none of her vows, or of her bonds with which she has bound her soul, shall stand: and Yahweh will forgive her, because her father disallowed her.
- Numbers 30:8 יִֽסְלַֽח Qal impf 3ms But if her husband disallow her in the day that he hears it, then he shall make void her vow which is on her, and the rash utterance of her lips, with which she has bound her soul: and Yahweh will forgive her.
- Numbers 30:12 יִֽסְלַֽח Qal impf 3ms But if her husband made them null and void in the day that he heard them, then whatever proceeded out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand: her husband has made them void; and Yahweh will forgive her.
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 forgive” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb סלח (çâlach). First canonically at Exodus 34:9, it enters the text early. It turns up in 45 verses across 13 books, a moderately common footprint. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). From the same root come סלח and סליחה. See the sense tree, 45-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5545 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 →
- 45
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 45 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #767
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 767 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 45 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Leviticus 10 verses 22%
- Numbers 8 verses 18%
- 2 Chronicles 6 verses 13%
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 45 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 20 verses · 44%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 15 verses · 33%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 22%
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: Shall be forgiven 13×, Forgive 12×, Pardon 7×
- American Standard Version: Forgive 12×, Pardon 7×, He shall be forgiven 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Forgive 15×, He will be forgiven 10×, I will forgive 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Forgive 16×, Will be forgiven 10×, May you forgive 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5545 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H5545 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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 H5545 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H5545 across 46 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.
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.
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 2 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.
Qal
- Pf. 2 ms. סָלַחְתָּ Ex 34:9 + 9 times, סָלָ֑חְתָּ La 3:42 + 2 times; 1 s. סָלַחְתִּי Nu 14:20 + 2 times; Impf. 3 ms. יִסְלַח 30:6 + 4 times; 1 s. אֶסְלַח Je 31:34 + 3 times + 5:7 Qr (Kt אֶסְלוֹח); Imv. סְלַח Nu 14:19 Am 7:2; סְלָ֑חָה Dn 9:19; Inf. סְלֹחַ Dt 29:19; 2 K 24:4; סְלוֹחַ Is 55:7; Pt. act. סֹלֵחַ ψ 103:3;—forgive, pardon, always of God: abs. Nu 14:20 (J), 1 K 8:30, 39 = 2 Ch 6:21, 30, 2 K 24:4; Is 55:7; Am 7:2; La 3:42; Dn 9:19; c. לְ, of the sin Ex 34:9; Nu 14:19 (both J), Je 31:34; 33:8; 36:3 ψ 25:11; 103:3; 1 K 8:34, 36 = 2 Ch 6:25, 27, 2 Ch 7:14; + לְ, of sinner Dt 29:19; 1 K 8:50 = 2 Ch 6:39, 2 K 5:18(×2); Je 5:1, 7; 50:20, and in law, Nu 30:6, 9, 13 (P). e.g. Exodus 34:9
Niphal
- Pf. 3 ms. נִסְלַח, c. לְ, term. techn. in code of P, it shall be forgiven him לוֹ Lv 4:26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13, 16, 18, 26; 19:22 Nu 15:28; them לָהֶם Lv 4:20 Nu 15:25; לְכָל־עֲדַת וגו׳ v 26. e.g. Leviticus 4:26
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
vb. forgive, pardon (𝔗 סְלַח id., NH סְלִיחָה forgiveness);—
— 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.
סָלַח
- [Assyr. to sprinkle,] to forgive. Y. Yoma VIII, end, 45ᶜ ותִסְלַח לי על וכ׳ and forgive me all my sins. Num. R. s. 16, end בשבילך אֶסְלַח להם for thy sake I will pardon them. Tanḥ. Ki Thissa 27 וסָלַחְתִּי כדבריך and I pardoned (Israel) according to thy word; a. fr.
- to be forgiven. Yalk. Ps. 755 ונ׳ לו (Midr. Till. to Ps. XLVIII ומתכפר) and he is forgiven.
סְלַח
- Targ. Ex. XXXIV, 7; a. e.
- 1. same. Targ. Is. LV, 7.—2) same.
- to effect forgiveness. Targ. O. Num. XVIII, 1.
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 33 distinct written forms H5545 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5545, 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 44 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 45 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
- Exodus 34:9
- Leviticus 4:20
- Numbers 14:19
- Deuteronomy 29:20
- 1 Kings 8:30
- 2 Kings 5:18
- 2 Chronicles 6:21
- Psalms 25:11
- Isaiah 55:7
- Jeremiah 5:1
- Lamentations 3:42
- Daniel 9:19
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.
