סַם
spice
‘spice’ is one of 2 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
- 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
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H5561 appears — 15 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 10 verses
- Exodus 25:6 הַ/סַּמִּֽים ptcl def.art + n c mp oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense,
- Exodus 30:7 סַמִּ֑ים n c mp Aaron shall burn incense of sweet spices on it every morning. When he tends the lamps, he shall burn it.
- Exodus 30:34 סַמִּ֗ים סַמִּ֖ים n c mp n c mp Yahweh said to Moses, "Take to yourself sweet spices, gum resin, and onycha, and galbanum; sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be an equal weight;
- Exodus 31:11 הַ/סַּמִּ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp the anointing oil, and the incense of sweet spices for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded you they shall do."
- Exodus 35:8 הַ/סַּמִּֽים ptcl def.art + n c mp oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the sweet incense,
- Exodus 35:15 הַ/סַּמִּ֑ים ptcl def.art + n c mp and the altar of incense with its poles, the anointing oil, the sweet incense, the screen for the door, at the door of the tent;
- Exodus 35:28 הַ/סַּמִּֽים ptcl def.art + n c mp and the spice, and the oil for the light, for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense.
- Exodus 37:29 הַ/סַּמִּ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp He made the holy anointing oil and the pure incense of sweet spices, after the art of the perfumer.
- Exodus 39:38 הַ/סַּמִּ֑ים ptcl def.art + n c mp the golden altar, the anointing oil, the sweet incense, the screen for the door of the Tent,
- Exodus 40:27 סַמִּ֑ים n c mp and he burnt incense of sweet spices on it, as Yahweh commanded Moses.
Leviticus 2 verses
- Leviticus 4:7 הַ/סַּמִּים֙ ptcl def.art + n c mp The priest shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of sweet incense before Yahweh, which is in the tent of meeting; and he shall pour out all the blood of the bull out at the base of the altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the Tent of Meeting.
- Leviticus 16:12 סַמִּ֖ים n c mp He shall take a censer full of coals of fire from off the altar before Yahweh, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil:
Numbers 1 verse
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 2:4 סַמִּים֩ n c mp Behold, I am about to build a house for the name of Yahweh my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him incense of sweet spices, and for the continual show bread, and for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the set feasts of Yahweh our God. This is [an ordinance] forever to Israel.
- 2 Chronicles 13:11 סַמִּים֩ n c mp and they burn to Yahweh every morning and every evening burnt offerings and sweet incense: the show bread also [set they] in order on the pure table; and the lampstand of gold with the lamps of it, to burn every evening: for we keep the charge of Yahweh our God; but you have forsaken him.
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.
The Hebrew noun סם centers on the idea of “spice.” Exodus dominates its distribution — 10 of 15 verses. Spanning 15 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. BDB distinguishes 2 senses for it. The King James Version usually renders it “sweet,” while modern versions prefer “fragrant” (Berean Standard Bible) and “fragrance” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Dig into 15-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5561 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 15 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 10 verses 67%
- Leviticus 2 verses 13%
- 2 Chronicles 2 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 15 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 13 verses · 87%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 13%
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: Sweet 13×
- American Standard Version: Sweet 14×
- Berean Standard Bible: Fragrant 14×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Fragrance 9×, Spices 5×, Spiced 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5561 across 17 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 H5561 across 17 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 H5561 across 15 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5561 across 17 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.
- spice
- a spice used in incense
Word origin
[ סַם ] 16 n.m. spice, used in incense
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: from an unused root meaning to smell sweet
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.
סַם
- cmp. Arab. samma, to penetrate) drug (healing or deleterious); medicine; poison; paint. Sabb. XII, 4 כתב בדיו בסם וכ׳ if one wrote (on the Sabbath) with ink, with a paint (orpiment or sandaracha) &c. Lam. R. to II, 11, v. דִּמְעָה. Ḥull. III, 5 אבלה סם המות if the animal is known to have swallowed a deadly poison; ib. 58ᵇ סם המות דבהמה what is deadly to animals, דאדם what is deadly to man. B. Kam. 85ᵃ כמה … בין סייף לסם how much a person condemned by the government to have his hand cut off would pay for the difference (in pain) between the plain operation with the sword and that performed under the influence of a drug (mandrake, v. Plin. H. N. XXV, 150). Yoma 72ᵇ (play on שָׂם, Deut. IV, 44) זכה … סם חיים וכ׳ if he applies his learning rightly, it becomes to him a medicine of life, if not, a deadly poison. Kidd. 30ᵇ (play on ושמתם, Deut. XI, 18) סם תם an unfailing remedy; Sifré Deut. 45; a. fr.—Pl. סַמִּים. Gen. R. s. 10 (fr. Ben Sira) אלוה העלה ס׳ וכ׳ God made drugs come forth out of the earth, with them the physician heals …, and out of them the druggist produces poisonous drugs. Ker. 6ᵇ; a. e. e.g. Deuteronomy 4:44
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 9 distinct written forms H5561 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/סַּמִּֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 25:6 | 3 |
| הַ/סַּמִּ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 35:15 | 2 |
| הַ/סַּמִּ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 31:11 | 2 |
| סַמִּ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 30:7 | 2 |
| סַמִּ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 30:34 | 2 |
| סַמִּים֩ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 2:4 | 2 |
| הַ/סַּמִּ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 4:16 | 1 |
| הַ/סַּמִּים֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Leviticus 4:7 | 1 |
| סַמִּ֗ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 30:34 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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.
