סָפַח
to join
also: attach to, join together fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hithpael verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘attach me’
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“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”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where H5596 appears in the Hithpael stem in the Book of 1 Samuel. Filtered view — show all forms. 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 Samuel
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.
ספח (çâphach) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to join.” As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 5 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). Spanning 6 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. 1 Samuel dominates its distribution — 2 of 6 verses. Scripture first uses it in 1 Samuel 2:36. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5596 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 83%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 17%
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†: Abiding 1×, Put 1×, Puttest 1×
- American Standard Version†: Himself with them 1×, I should not cleave 1×, Put 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Appoint me 1×, Huddled 1×, Pouring it 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Assign me 1×, Joining myself 1×, Pouring out 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5596 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5596 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5596 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5596 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 Pual (the passive of Piel) and Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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 5 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.
ספח I join, attach to
Qal
- attach me, pray, to one of the priest’s offices.
Niphal
- . and they shall attach themselves to the house of Jacob
Piel
- . joining (to it?) thy fury
Pual
- . are joined together, hold themselves together
Hithpael
- . they have driven me out from joining myself with the inheritance of י׳.
ספח II cause a scab upon, smite with scab
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. [ סָפַח ] vb. join, attach to
שִׂפַּח vb. Pi. denom. cause a scab upon, smite with scab;— Is 3:17
— 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.
סָפַח
- (b. h.) to grow, swell, be added to.
- 1. to add, esp. (of a river) to cast out alluvial soil, make new land Gen. R. s. 13 על הנהר שמְסַפֵּחַ למדינה וכ׳ when a river ameliorates the soil of a district, we say the blessing etc.; Y. Ber. IX, 14ᵃ מספיק (corr. acc.). (corr. acc.).
- 2. to join, conspire. Tanḥ. Thazr. 11 (play on ספחת, Lev. XIII, 2) שהיה המן מספח עם וכ׳ Haman conspired with Ahasver to destroy etc. e.g. Leviticus 13:2
- 3. (v. סַפַּחַת) to smite with sores. Pesik. Vattom., p. 133ᵃ (ref. to ושׂפח, Is. III, 17) ואין ספח אלא צרעת sippaḥ means striking with leprosy; Tanḥ. l. c. אין ושִׂפַּח וכ׳; Lev. R. s. 16 הלקן בצרעת. e.g. Isaiah 3:17
- to attach one’s self, become a citizen. Ruth R. to I, 1 end שהניחו ישראל ונִסְתַּפְּחוּ וכ׳ they left Israel and became citizens in the fields of Moab.
סֶפַח
- , v. סָפִיחַ
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 H5596 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/נִסְפְּח֖וּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 14:1 | 1 |
| וְ/שִׂפַּ֣ח | Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 3:17 | 1 |
| יְסֻפָּֽחוּ | Verb, Pual, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 30:7 | 1 |
| מְסַפֵּ֥חַ | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Habakkuk 2:15 | 1 |
| מֵ/הִסְתַּפֵּ֜חַ | Verb, Hithpael, Infinitive Construct | 1 Samuel 26:19 | 1 |
| סְפָחֵ֥/נִי | Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Samuel 2:36 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5596, 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
- מספחה miçpâchâh H4555 veil
- מספחת miçpachath H4556 scab
- משפח mispâch H4939 bloodshed
- ספחת çappachath H5597 scab
- ספיח çâphîyach H5599 volunteer plants
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
