סָלַף
to pervert
‘to pervert’ 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘pervert’
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- 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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (43%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (29%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5557 appears — 7 distinct verses across 4 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Proverbs 4 verses
- Proverbs 13:6 תְּסַלֵּ֥ף Piel impf 3fs Righteousness guards the way of integrity, But wickedness overthrows the sinner.
- Proverbs 19:3 תְּסַלֵּ֣ף Piel impf 3fs The foolishness of man subverts his way; His heart rages against Yahweh.
- Proverbs 21:12 מְסַלֵּ֖ף Piel ptcp.act ms The Righteous One considers the house of the wicked, And brings the wicked to ruin.
- Proverbs 22:12 וַ֝/יְסַלֵּ֗ף conj + Piel wimpf 3ms The eyes of Yahweh watch over knowledge; But he frustrates the words of the unfaithful.
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.
At its core, סלף (çâlaph) means “to pervert.” Its uses cluster heavily in Proverbs (57% of all occurrences). Spanning 7 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Exodus 23:8. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. 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 H5557 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Proverbs 4 verses 57%
- Exodus 1 verse 14%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 14%
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 7 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 71%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 29%
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: Overthroweth 2×, Perverteth 2×
- American Standard Version: Overthroweth 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Twists 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Perverts 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5557 across 7 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5557 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H5557 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H5557 across 8 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
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.
Piel
- 1. pervert
- 2. subvert, turn upside down, ruin
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
סָלַף vb. twist, pervert, overturn
— 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.
סָלַף
- to twist, pervert.
- same. Tanḥ. Noah 19 לא תְסַלְּפוּ הדרך do not pervert the way (deviate from the right path).
סְלַף
- Part. pass. סָלִיף. Targ. Prov. X, 10 Ms. (ed. סַלִּיף adj.).—[Targ. Job XXXIV, 29 ויסלף ed. Lag., read ויסלק, v. סְלֵק.]
- to be distorted. Targ. II Esth. VI, 10.
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 H5557 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וִֽ/יסַלֵּ֖ף | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 16:19 | 2 |
| וַ֝/יְסַלֵּ֗ף | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 22:12 | 1 |
| יְסַלֵּֽף | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 12:19 | 1 |
| מְסַלֵּ֖ף | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 21:12 | 1 |
| תְּסַלֵּ֣ף | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 19:3 | 1 |
| תְּסַלֵּ֥ף | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 13:6 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5557, 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 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
