עֲבֹת
rope
also: cord, cordage, foliage, interwoven foliage 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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Both
- Attested as both masculine and feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H5688 appears in the Book of Hosea — 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.
Hosea
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 עבת centers on the idea of “rope.” Its English rendering has broadened — “wreathen” classically, “ropes” (Berean Standard Bible) and “rope” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 23 verses in 7 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Exodus dominates its distribution — 7 of 23 verses. Beyond “rope” it also covers “cord”, “cordage”, and “foliage” — see its full sense range. Dig into 23-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5688 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 →
- 23
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 23 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,327
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,327 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 23 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 23 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 12 verses · 52%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 30%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 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†: Wreathen 7×, Cords 5×, Bands 3×
- American Standard Version†: Wreathen 6×, Among the thick boughs 3×, Ropes 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Ropes 8×, Chains 5×, Clouds 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Rope 5×, Ropes 5×, Cords 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5688 across 25† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5688 across 26† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H5688 across 22† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5688 across 31† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 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.
עבת I having interwoven foliage, leafy
עבת II
- 1. cord, rope:
- a. as fetter, Ju 15:13, 14; 16:11, 12; Ez 3:25; 4:8; Jb 39:10 (of wild ox), so also prob. ψ 118:27 bind the festal victim (חַג) with cords Ew Ol De Hup-Now Dr al.; > with branches Che, cf. Bae Du; fig. of authority ψ 2:3 (‖ מוֹסְרוֹתֵימוֹ), 129:4. e.g. Judges 15:13
- b. עֲבוֹת הָעֲגָלָה Is 5:18 i.e. with which a cart is drawn (in sim.; ‖ חַבְלֵי הַשָּׁוְא); fig. עֲבֹתוֹת אַהֲבָה Ho 11:4 with the cords of love, of י׳’s drawing Isr. (‖ חַבְלֵי אָדָם). e.g. Isaiah 5:18
- c. cordage, cord, of (twisted) golden chains on high priest’s breast-piece (all P): מַעֲשֵׂה עֲבֹת, cordage-work Ex 28:14, 22; 39:15; שַׁרְשְׁרֹת הָעֲבֹתֹת 28:14 the chains of cords (cordlike chains); שְׁתֵּי (הָ)עֲבֹתֹת the two cords v 24, 25; 39:17, 18. e.g. Exodus 28:14
- 2. interwoven foliage (?) in phr. (עַל־)בֵּין עֲבֹתִים of top of a vine Ez 19:11 (clouds Ew Hi-Sm Toy, read then עָבוֹת); of cedar, 31:3, 10, 14, but in these certainly clouds, so 𝔊 Ew Hi-Sm Co al. e.g. Ezekiel 19:11
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
II. adj. having interwoven foliage, leafy;—עֵץ עָבוֹת leafy trees Ez 20:28; Ne 8:15; עֵץ עָבֹת Lv 23:40 (H); f. אֵלָה עֲבֻתָּה Ez 6:13 a leafy terebinth.—עָבוֹת 2 S 23:4 ψ 77:18 v. ii. עָב sub עוּב.
I. n.m. Ju 15:13 + et f. Ju 15:14; Jb 39:10 (twisted) cord, rope; cordage; interwoven foliage (?);—abs. ע׳ Ex 28:14 + 2 times; cstr. עֲבוֹת Is 5:18 ψ 129:4; sf. 3 ms. עֲבֹתוֹ Jb 39:10, 3 mpl. עֲבֹתֵ֑ימוֹ ψ 2:3; pl. עֲבֹתִים Ju 15:13 +, עֲבֹתֹת Ex 28:14 +, etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עבת (ʻâbôth) (H5687) — leafy.
Forms in the corpus
The 20 distinct written forms H5688 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 21 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 23 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.
