אָנַח
to groan
‘to groan’ 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
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H584 appears in the Book of Lamentations — 4 distinct verses. 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.
Lamentations
- Lamentations 1:4 נֶאֱנָחִ֑ים Niphal ptcp.pass mp The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly; All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.
- Lamentations 1:8 נֶאֶנְחָ֖ה Niphal pf 3fs Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she is become as an unclean thing; All who honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: Yes, she sighs, and turns backward.
- Lamentations 1:11 נֶאֱנָחִים֙ Niphal ptcp.pass mp All her people sigh, they seek bread; They have given their pleasant things for food to refresh the soul: Look, Yahweh, and see; for I am become abject.
- Lamentations 1:21 נֶאֱנָחָ֣ה Niphal ptcp.pass fs They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me; All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it: You will bring the day that you have proclaimed, and they shall be like me.
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.
At its core, אנח (ʼânach) means “to groan.” Translators differ — “sigh” in the King James Version, then “groan” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 11 verses in 6 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Lamentations (36% of all occurrences). Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Dig into 11-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H584 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Lamentations 4 verses 36%
- Ezekiel 3 verses 27%
- Exodus 1 verse 9%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 45%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 45%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 9%
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: Sigh 5×
- American Standard Version: Sigh 4×, Do sigh 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Groan 6×, Groaning 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are groaning 2×, Groan 2×, Groans 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H584 across 12 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 H584 across 12 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H584 across 13 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H584 across 13 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
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 3 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.
- 1. sigh, in token of grief
- 2. in physical distress
- 3. groan of cattle
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
[ אָנַח ] vb. only Niph. sigh, groan
— 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.
אָנַח
- to press. Hithpa. הִתְאַנֵּחַ to sigh. Ber. 59ᵃ, v. next w. Yalk. Ex. 391 מִתְאַנֵּחַ על כבודו וכ׳ is anxious for the honor of the Lord &c.
אֲנַח
- Peil אָנִיחַ, Ithpa. אִתְאַנַּח same. Targ. Lam. I, 4; 11.—Targ. Is. XXIV, 7; a. e. Contr. אִתַּנַּח. Targ. O. Ex. II, 23 late ed.—Ithpe. אִיתְּנַח, אִתְּ׳. Ber. 58ᵇ. Ib. 59ᵃ אִתְּנוּחֵי מתנח Ms. M. (ed. אנחה מִתְאַנֵּחַ) he sighs.—Pesik. R. s. 18, end; Pesik. Haom. p. 72ᵃ שרי מיתנח he began to sigh.
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 12 distinct written forms H584 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הֵֽאָנַ֑ח | Verb, Niphal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 21:6 | 1 |
| הַ/נֶּֽאֱנָחִים֙ | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 9:4 | 1 |
| וַ/יֵּאָנְח֧וּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Exodus 2:23 | 1 |
| יֵאָ֥נַֽח | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 29:2 | 1 |
| נֶאֱנָ֑ח | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 21:7 | 1 |
| נֶאֱנָחִ֑ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Lamentations 1:4 | 1 |
| נֶאֱנָחִים֙ | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Lamentations 1:11 | 1 |
| נֶאֱנָחָ֣ה | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Lamentations 1:21 | 1 |
| נֶאֶנְח֖וּ | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 24:7 | 1 |
| נֶאֶנְחָ֖ה | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Lamentations 1:8 | 1 |
| נֶּאֶנְחָ֣ה | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Joel 1:18 | 1 |
| תֵּֽאָנַ֖ח | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 21:6 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 11 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
