עַזָּה
Gaza
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Gaza’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H5804 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 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.
1 Kings
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.
“Gaza” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name עזה (ʻAzzâh). First canonically at Genesis 10:19, it enters the text early. It turns up in 20 verses across 12 books, an uncommon footprint. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5804 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 →
- 20
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 20 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,462
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,462 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 20 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 20 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 17 verses · 85%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 10%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 5%
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: Gaza 16×, Azzah 3×
- American Standard Version: Gaza 17×
- Berean Standard Bible: Gaza 16×, Far as gaza 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Gaza 18×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5804 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H5804 across 21 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 H5804 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H5804 across 19 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 BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- Azzah = "the strong"
- another name for 'Gaza'…
Word origin
n.pr.loc. Gaza, Γαζα (Assyrian Ḫazzutu, etc., COTi. 97 DlPa 290, TelAm. Ḫazati, Azzati Wkl38*; Egyptian Gaḏatu̥ WMMAs. u. Eur. 87, 96, 159, 392; 𝔊 Γαζα, so JosAnt. xiii. 5, 5, etc.; Herod. ii. 159; iii. 5 Κάδυτις);—Philistine city (mod. غَزَّة, Ghazze, Razze), c. Lat. 31° 3ˊ N, Long. 34° 28ˊ E. c. 50 miles WSW. from Jerus., near the sea (RobBR ii. 36 ff. GASmGeogr. 181 ff. BuhlGeogr. 190 f.), Ju 16:1, 21 (both עַזָּ֫תָה), southernmost of the famous five cities, Gn 10:19 (J), Ju 6:4; 1 K 5:4; 2 K 18:8, cf. Dt 2:23; Jos 10:41 (D); also 11:22 (D), 15:47 (P), Ju 1:18; 1 S 6:17; Am 1:6, 7; Zp 2:4; Je 25:20; 47:1, 5; Zc 9:5(×2);—On commercial importance v. DHMB und S 989 GattZPV vii (1884), 1 ff., 293 ff.; viii (1885), 69 ff., 179 ff..—For עַזָּה 1 Ch 7:28 van d. H., read עַיָּה Baer Ginsb (q.v.), Be Oettli Kau KitHpt.; v. עַי.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עז (ʻaz) (H5794) — strong.
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.
עַזָּה I
- f., v. עַז
עַזָּה II
- (b. h.) pr. n. pl. Gaza, one of the chief cities of the Philistines. Y. Ab. Zar. I, 39ᵈ top יריד ע׳; Bab. Ab. Zar. 11ᵇ, v. עַטְלֵיז. Tosef. Neg. VI, 1; Snh. 71ᵃ תחום ע׳ the district of Gaza. Num. R. s. 9, a. e., v. קִילְקוּל; Tosef. Sot. III, 15 עַזָּתָה.
עִזָּה
- , v. עִיזָּה
עֻזָּה
- , v. עוּזָּה
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 14 distinct written forms H5804 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| עַזָּ֑ה | Noun, Proper | Amos 1:7 | 5 |
| עַזָּ֔ה | Noun, Proper | Amos 1:6 | 3 |
| עַזָּה֙ | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 25:20 | 2 |
| בְּ/עַזָּ֛ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 11:22 | 1 |
| וְ/עַזָּה֙ | Noun, Proper | Zechariah 9:5 | 1 |
| לְ/עַזָּ֤ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 6:17 | 1 |
| מֵֽ/עַזָּ֔ה | Noun, Proper | Zechariah 9:5 | 1 |
| עַזָּ֑תָ/ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 16:1 | 1 |
| עַזָּ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 2 Kings 18:8 | 1 |
| עַזָּ֗תָ/ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 16:21 | 1 |
| עַזָּ֣ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 1:18 | 1 |
| עַזָּ֥ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:47 | 1 |
| עַזָּֽה | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 47:1 | 1 |
| עַיָּ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 7:28 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5804, 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
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- עזבוק ʻAzbûwq H5802 Azbuk
- עזגד ʻAzgâd H5803 Azgad
- עזמות ʻAzmâveth H5820 Azmaveth
- עזן ʻAzzân H5821 Azzan
- Γαζα Gáza G1048 Gaza
- עזתי ʻAzzâthîy H5841 Gazathite
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 8 — not the complete family. 6 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Gaza). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Called also Azzah, which is its Hebrew name (Deut. 2:23; 1 Kings 4:24; Jer. 25:20), strong, a city on the Mediterranean shore, remarkable for its early importance as the chief centre of a great commercial traffic with Egypt. It is one of the oldest cities of the world (Gen. 10:19; Josh. 15:47). Its earliest inhabitants were the Avims, who were conquered and displaced by the Caphtorims (Deut. 2:23; Josh. 13:2, 3), a Philistine tribe. In the division of the land it fell to the lot of Judah (Josh. 15:47; Judg. 1:18). It was the southernmost of the five great Philistine cities which gave each a golden emerod as a trespass-offering unto the Lord (1 Sam. 6:17). Its gates were carried away by Samson (Judg. 16:1-3). Here he was afterwards a prisoner, and "did grind in the prison house." Here he also pulled down the temple of Dagon, and slew "all the lords of the Philistines," himself also perishing in the ruin (Judg. 16:21-30). The prophets denounce the judgments of God against it (Jer. 25:20; 47:5; Amos 1:6, 7; Zeph. 2:4). It is referred to in Acts 8:26. Philip is here told to take the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (about 6 miles south-west of Jerusalem), "which is desert", i.e., the "desert road," probably by Hebron, through the desert hills of Southern Judea. (See SAMSON.)
It is noticed on monuments as early as B.C. 1600. Its small port is now called el-Mineh.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(the fortified; the strong) (properly Azzah), one of the five chief cities of the Philistines. It is remarkable for its continuous existence and importance from the very earliest times. The secret of this unbroken history is to be found in the situation of Gaza. It is the last town in the southwest of Palestine, on the frontier towards Egypt. The same peculiarity of situation has made Gaza important in a military sense. Its name means "the strong;" and this was well elucidated in its siege by Alexander the Great, which lasted five months. In the conquest of Joshua the territory of Gaza is mentioned as one which he was not able to subdue. (Joshua 10:41; 11:22; 13:3) It was assigned to the tribe of Judah, (Joshua 15:47) and that tribe did obtain possession of it, (Judges 1:18) but did not hold it long, (Judges 3:3; 13:1) and apparently it continued through the time of Samuel, Saul and David to be a Philistine city. 1Sam 6:17; 14:52; 31:1; 2Sam 21:15 Solomon became master of "Azzah," (1 Kings 4:24) but in after times the same trouble with the Philistines recurred. (2 Chronicles 21:16; 26:6; 28:18) The passage where Gaza is mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 8:26) is full of interest. It is the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch on his return from Jerusalem to Egypt. Gaza is the modern Ghuzzeh, a Mohammedan town of about 16,000 inhabitants, situated partly on an oblong hill of moderate height and partly on the lower ground. The climate of the place is almost tropical, but it has deep wells of excellent water. There are a few palm trees in the town, and its fruit orchards are very productive; but the chief feature of the neighborhood is the wide-spread olive grove to the north and northeast
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
strong; a goat
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 19 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 20 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
- Genesis 10:19
- Deuteronomy 2:23
- Joshua 10:41
- Judges 1:18
- 1 Samuel 6:17
- 2 Kings 18:8
- 1 Chronicles 7:28
- Jeremiah 25:20
- Amos 1:6
- Zephaniah 2:4
- Zechariah 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.
