עָדַף
to be in excess
‘to be in excess’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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”). Here: ‘the surplus’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
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”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 4 times (44%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 3 times (33%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5736 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.
Exodus 4 verses
- Exodus 16:18 הֶעְדִּיף֙ Hiphil pf 3ms When they measured it with an omer, he who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack. They gathered every man according to his eating.
- Exodus 16:23 הָ֣/עֹדֵ֔ף ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act ms He said to them, "This is that which Yahweh has spoken, 'Tomorrow is a solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to Yahweh. Bake that which you want to bake, and boil that which you want to boil; and all that remains over lay up for yourselves to be kept until the morning."
- Exodus 26:12 הָ/עֹדֵ֔ף הָ/עֹדֶ֔פֶת ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act ms ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act fs The overhanging part that remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tent.
- Exodus 26:13 בָּ/עֹדֵ֔ף prep det + Qal ptcp.act ms The cubit on the one side, and the cubit on the other side, of that which remains in the length of the curtains of the tent, shall hang over the sides of the tent on this side and on that side, to cover it.
Leviticus 1 verse
Numbers 3 verses
- Numbers 3:46 הָ/עֹֽדְפִים֙ ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act mp For the redemption of the two hundred seventy-three of the firstborn of the children of Israel, who exceed the number of the Levites,
- Numbers 3:48 הָ/עֹדְפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act mp and you shall give the money, with which the remainder of them is redeemed, to Aaron and to his sons."
- Numbers 3:49 הָ/עֹ֣דְפִ֔ים ptcl def.art + Qal ptcp.act mp Moses took the redemption money from those who exceeded the number of those who were redeemed by the Levites;
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 עדף centers on the idea of “to be in excess.” The word gravitates to Exodus (50%), then Numbers and Leviticus. It appears 8 verses across 3 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Debuting at Exodus 16:18, it then recurs through the corpus. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Hiphil, and more). Dig into 8-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5736 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.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 8 verses · 100%
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: Remaineth 2×
- American Standard Version: Are over and above 1×, Had nothing over 1×, Other side 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Excess 4×, Remains 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ones being in excess 3×, Remaining 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5736 across 9 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5736 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5736 across 9 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5736 across 10 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.
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.
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 2 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.
Qal
- the surplus (of curtains) that remains over
Hiphil
- . have a surplus
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
[ עָדַף ] vb. remain over, be in excess
— 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.
עָדַף
- (b. h.) [to be lax, hang over,] to be abundant; to be larger, more, better. Sifra K’dosh. beg. יכול שכבוד האב עוֹדֵף וכ׳ you might think that honoring the father was more important than &c. Yalk. Ps. 876 יַעֲדֹף, v. עָדִיף h. Midd. IV, 7 האולם עוֹדֵף עליו וכ׳ the hall extended beyond it (the Hekhal) fifteen cubits to the north &c. Y. R. Hash. II, 58ᵇ top [read:] אילו אמר בעיבור הייתי אומר … שההמה עוֹדֶפֶת וכ׳ if he had said b’‘ibbur (by intercalation), I might have said, this refers to the eleven days by which the solar year is larger than the lunar year. Erub. 83ᵃ סאה של ירושלמית עודפת וכ׳ Ms. M. (ed. יתירה) the Jerusalem S’ah is larger than … by &c.; a. e.
- to do more (than enough); to be liberal. Kidd. 63ᵃ, a. e. שמא תַעְדִּיף יתר וכ׳ she might do more work for him than is due to him. Tosef. B. Mets. IV, 14 אע"פ שמַעְדִּיפִין זה על זה although one of the partners does more business than the other (they are liberal towards one another). Y. Dem. V, 24ᶜ המַעְדִּיף על מעשרותיו he who adds to his tithes (gives more than one-tenth; Tosef. Dem. VIII, 13 המרבה במעשרות); a. e.
עֲדַף
- , v. עָדִיף ch.
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 8 distinct written forms H5736 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הָ֣/עֹדֵ֔ף | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 16:23 | 2 |
| בָּ/עֹדֵ֔ף | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 26:13 | 1 |
| הֶעְדִּיף֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Exodus 16:18 | 1 |
| הָ/עֹ֣דְפִ֔ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 3:49 | 1 |
| הָ/עֹֽדְפִים֙ | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 3:46 | 1 |
| הָ/עֹדְפִ֖ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 3:48 | 1 |
| הָ/עֹדֵ֔ף | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 26:12 | 1 |
| הָ/עֹדֶ֔פֶת | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 26:12 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 8 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.
