עָבָה
to be fat
‘to be fat’ 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5666 appears in the Book of 2 Chronicles — 1 distinct verse. 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.
2 Chronicles
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 verb עבה centers on the idea of “to be fat.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. Deuteronomy dominates its distribution — 1 of 3 verses. Debuting at Deuteronomy 32:15, it then recurs through the corpus. The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. 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 H5666 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 33%
- 1 Kings 1 verse 33%
- 2 Chronicles 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 33%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 33%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 33%
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: Finger shall be thicker 2×
- American Standard Version: Little finger is thicker 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Is thicker 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Is thicker 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5666 across 3 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5666 across 3 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5666 across 3 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5666 across 3 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 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 1 sense 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. 3 ms. קָֽטֳנִּי ע׳ מִמָּתְנֵי אָבִי 1 K 12:10 my little finger is thicker (stouter) than, etc., = 2 Ch 10:10; be thick, gross, of rebell. Isr. under fig. of highly fed beast, 2 ms. שָׁמַנְתָּ עָבִּיתָ כָּשִׂיתָ Dt 32:15. e.g. 1 Kings 12:10
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. be thick, fat, gross (NH Pi. עִבָּה make thick, and deriv.; Syriac ܥܒܳܐ swell up, pt. pass. swollen, thick, dense, stupid, and many deriv.; Arabic غَبِىَ be dense, stupid, أَغُبَى dense foliage; Ethiopic ዐብየ: be great Di985);—
— 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.
עָבָה I
- , f. of עָב.
עָבָה II
- , v. עבי
עבי
- to be thick, dense, dark.
- to become thick, swell. Tanḥ. Vaëra 3 ובלען … ולא נ׳ יותר וכ׳ Aaron’s staff swallowed them up and yet was not thicker than before.
- same. Tosef. Kil. III, 4 הֶעֱבוּ ונעשו מכוונות (not העבן) if the plants on growing denser appeared to form a straight line; Y. ib. V, beg. 29ᵈ העבות (R. S. to Kil. V, 1 היו עבים; corr. acc.).
- to make thick; to condense, darken; to facilitate growth. Y. Taan. III, 66ᶜ מְעַבֶּה, v. עָב II. M. Kat. II, 5 מְחַפִּין … אף מְעַבִּין (during the festive week) you may cover up the cut figs with straw; … you may even &c.; expl. ib. 13ᵇ מחפין אקלושי מעבין אסמוכי by m’ḥappin is meant a loose covering, by m’ʿabbin a dense, packed covering; (anoth. opin.) מחפין … מע׳ … כמין כרי m’ḥappin means a loose or a dense covering, m’ʿabbin means bringing the figs close together so as to form a pile. Y. Peah III, 17ᶜ בשעי׳ על מנת להדל if he set the plants close together with the intention of thinning them afterwards. Ib. VII, 20ᵇ מתוך שהוא מְעַבָּן וכ׳ because he strengthens the remaining plants (by thinning the field), they produce more fruit the next year (and thus he benefits also the poor). Y. Shebi. I, beg. 33ᵃ מעבה את הכורת he advances the growth of the ramification, opp. מתיש כוחה. Y. Bets. IV, 62ᶜ top בשלא נתכוין לעַבֹּותָהּ when (in putting wood on the booth) he had not had the intention to cover it more densely; a. e.—Tosef. Peah IV, 14 המעבה את שוקיו (ed. Zuck. המקפח) he who contracts his shoulders (simulating a hump), v. קָפַח.—Part. pass. מְעוּבֶּה, q. v.
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 2 distinct written forms H5666 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| עָבָ֖ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 12:10 | 2 |
| עָבִ֣יתָ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 32:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5666, 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 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
