סָרָה
apostasy
also: defection, turning aside, withdrawal 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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5627 appears — 8 distinct verses across 3 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.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 13:5 סָ֠רָה n c fs That prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to draw you aside out of the way which Yahweh your God commanded you to walk in. So shall you put away the evil from the midst of you.
- Deuteronomy 19:16 סָרָֽה n c fs If an unrighteous witness rise up against any man to testify against him of wrong-doing,
Isaiah 4 verses
- Isaiah 1:5 סָרָ֑ה n c fs Why should you be beaten more, That you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faint.
- Isaiah 14:6 סָרָ֑ה n c fs who struck the peoples in wrath with a continual stroke, who ruled the nations in anger, with a persecution that none restrained.
- Isaiah 31:6 סָרָ֖ה n c fs Turn you to him from whom you have deeply revolted, children of Israel.
- Isaiah 59:13 וְ/סָרָ֔ה conj + n c fs transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 28:16 סָרָ֥ה n c fs Therefore thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will send you away from off the surface of the earth: this year you shall die, because you have spoken rebellion against Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 29:32 סָרָ֥ה n c fs therefore thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite, and his seed; he shall not have a man to dwell among this people, neither shall he see the good that I will do to my people, says Yahweh, because he has spoken rebellion against Yahweh.
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 סרה centers on the idea of “apostasy.” Isaiah dominates its distribution — 4 of 8 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 8 verses — uncommon. Its earliest occurrence is Deuteronomy 13:5. Alongside “apostasy” the lexicon also lists “defection”, “turning aside”, and “withdrawal” — part of its full sense range. Dig into 8-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5627 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Isaiah 4 verses 50%
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 25%
- Jeremiah 2 verses 25%
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 8 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 75%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 25%
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: Rebellion 2×
- American Standard Version: Rebellion 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Rebellion 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Rebellion 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5627 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5627 across 7 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5627 across 7 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5627 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.
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 3 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.
- 1. defection, used appar. of any moral or legal offence Dt 19:16, so prob. Is 59:13 (+ עֹשֶׁק, דִּבְרֵי שָׁ֑קֶר). e.g. Deuteronomy 19:16
- 2. apostasy, Dt 13:6 Is 1:5; 31:6 Je 28:16; 29:32. e.g. Deuteronomy 13:6
- 3. בִּלְתִּי סָרָה non-withdrawal Is 14:6 (cf. vb., v 25 Am 6:7). e.g. Isaiah 14:6
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
n.f. a turning aside, defection, apostasy, withdrawal;—always abs. ס׳;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from סור (çûwr) (H5493) — to turn aside.
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.
סָרָה I
- , v. סרי
סָרָה II
- deviation, sin, transgression. Sifré Deut. 189 (ref. to Deut. XIX, 16) אין ס׳ אלא עבירה sarah means transgression; Yalk. ib. 922; v. סרי. e.g. Deuteronomy 19:16
סְרַהּ
- , v. סְרֵי II
סרי
- (v. next w.) to become offensive, vitiated; to decay.
- to cause to decay; to vitiate. Macc. 5ᵃ (ref. to לענות בו סרה, Deut. XIX, 16) עד שתַּסְרֶה גופה של עדות until thou vitiatest the testimony itself (by proving an alibi of the witness himself). e.g. Deuteronomy 19:16
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 H5627 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| סָרָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 1:5 | 2 |
| סָרָ֥ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 28:16 | 2 |
| וְ/סָרָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 59:13 | 1 |
| סָ֠רָה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 13:5 | 1 |
| סָרָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 31:6 | 1 |
| סָרָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 19:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5627, 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.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). 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 8 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.
