עָוָה
to twist
‘to twist’ 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 Hiphil 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”).
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘commit iniquity’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active 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”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- 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”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 13 distinct
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 3 times (18%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (12%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (12%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Construct 1 time (6%)
+5 more forms (5 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 17 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5753 appears — 17 distinct verses across 12 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.
1 Samuel 1 verse
2 Samuel 3 verses
- 2 Samuel 7:14 בְּ/הַ֣עֲוֺת֔/וֹ prep + Hiphil inf.cs + sfx pers 3ms I will be his father, and he shall be my son: if he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men;
- 2 Samuel 19:19 הֶעֱוָ֣ה Hiphil pf 3ms He said to the king, Don't let my lord impute iniquity to me, neither do you remember that which your servant did perversely the day that my lord the king went out of Jerusalem, that the king should take it to his heart.
- 2 Samuel 24:17 הֶעֱוֵ֔יתִי Hiphil pf 1cs David spoke to Yahweh when he saw the angel who struck the people, and said, Behold, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand be against me, and against my father's house.
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Esther 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 2 verses
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 21:3 נַעֲוֵ֣יתִי Niphal pf 1cs Therefore are my loins filled with anguish; pangs have taken hold on me, as the pangs of a woman in travail: I am pained so that I can't hear; I am dismayed so that I can't see.
- Isaiah 24:1 וְ/עִוָּ֣ה conj + Piel wpf 3ms Behold, Yahweh makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants of it.
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 3:21 הֶעֱוּוּ֙ Hiphil pf 3cp A voice is heard on the bare heights, the weeping [and] the petitions of the children of Israel; because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten Yahweh their God.
- Jeremiah 9:5 הַעֲוֵ֥ה Hiphil inf.abs They will deceive everyone his neighbor, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves to commit iniquity.
Lamentations 1 verse
Daniel 1 verse
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.
עוה — transliterated ʻâvâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to twist.” The verb spans 4 stems, from Niphal to Piel. Spanning 17 verses in 12 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at 1 Samuel 20:30, it then recurs through the corpus. From the same root come מעי, עוה and עויא. See the sense tree, 17-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5753 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 53%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 47%
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†: Crooked 1×, Did perversely 1×, Hath not done wrong 1×
- American Standard Version†: I am pained 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Done wrong 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Done wrong 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5753 across 17† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5753 across 16† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H5753 across 17† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H5753 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 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 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.
עוה I bend, twist (so Arabic عَوَى )
Niphal
- Pf. 1 s. נַעֲוֵיתִי Is 21:3 ψ 38:7; Pt. cstr. נַעֲוֵה Pr 12:8; f. cstr. נַעֲוַת 1 S 20:30 (but read נַעֲרַת 𝔊 We Dr SS Bu HPS);—be bent, bowed down, twisted, ‖ שׁחה ψ 38:7; ‖ נבהל Is 21:3; נַעֲוִה לֵב Pr 12:8 one perverted of mind. e.g. Isaiah 21:3
Piel
- Pf. 3 ms. עִוָּה, subj. י׳:—La 3:9 my paths hath he twisted; וְע׳ Is 24:1 its surface will be distort (‖ בּוֹקֵק הָאָרֶץ). e.g. Lamentations 3:9
Hiphil
- Pf. 1 s. יָשָׁר הֶעֱוֵיתִי Jb 33:27 the right have I perverted (‖ חָטָא); so 3 pl. הֶעֱזוּ אֶת־דַּרְכָּם Je 3:21. e.g. Job 33:27
עוה II denom. (Gerber90) commit iniquity, do wrong (Aramaic עוי commit sin, עֲוָיָא sin, cf. LevyNHWB iii. 626)
Qal
- (late) Pf. 3 fs. עָֽוְתָה Est 1:16 she hath done wrong (c. עַל); 1 pl. עָוִינוּ Dn 9:5 we have committed iniquity (‖ חָטָא). e.g. Esther 1:16
Hiphil
- commit iniquity;—Pf. 3 ms. הֶעֱוָה 2 S 19:20; 1 s. הֶעֱוֵיתִי 24:17 (‖ חָטָא); 1 pl. הֶעֱוִינוּ 1 K 8:47 = 2 Ch 6:37, ψ 106:6 (all ‖ חָטָא); Inf. abs. הַעֲוֵה Je 9:4, cstr. sf. הַעֲוֹתוֹ 2 S 7:14.—Jb 33:27 v. I. עָוָה. e.g. 2 Samuel 19:20
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. vb. bend, twist (so Arabic عَوَى );—
II. vb. denom. (Gerber90) commit iniquity, do wrong (Aramaic עוי commit sin, עֲוָיָא sin, cf. LevyNHWB iii. 626);—
— 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.
עָוָה
- , v. עוי
עוי
- (b. h.) [to be curved, bent, crooked; to curve &c.,] to pervert, do wrong. Yoma III, 8 עָוִיתִי פשעתי וכ׳ I have done wrong, I have transgressed &c. Ib. VI, 2 עָווּ פשעו וכ׳ thy people Israel has done wrong &c.; a. fr.
- 1. to subvert, lay waste (cmp. הָפַךְ). Ḥull. 60ᵇ (play on עַוִּים, Deut. II, 23) שעִיוּוּ את מקומן Ar. a. Rashi (ed. שעִיוְּתוּ) they laid waste their home (deserted it); Yalk. Deut. 809; Yalk. Josh. 22 שעִוּוּ.— e.g. Deuteronomy 2:23
- *2. to curve one’s self (like a serpent, v. עִוְיָא), wriggle. Ib. שעיוו לאלוהות הרבה Ar. they wriggled before many deities (ed. שאִיוּוּ, v. אָוָה I).
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 16 distinct written forms H5753 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5753, 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
- מעי mᵉʻîy H4596 ruin
- עוה ʻavvâh H5754 distortion
- עויא ʻivyâʼ H5758 perversity
- עון ʻâvôn H5771 iniquity
- עועה ʻavʻeh H5773 distorting
- עי ʻîy H5856 ruin
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 8 — 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 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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
- 1 Samuel 20:30
- 2 Samuel 7:14
- 1 Kings 8:47
- 2 Chronicles 6:37
- Esther 1:16
- Job 33:27
- Psalms 38:6
- Proverbs 12:8
- Isaiah 21:3
- Jeremiah 3:21
- Lamentations 3:9
- Daniel 9:5
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.
