עָלַף
to cover
‘to cover’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hithpael verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself). Here: ‘enwrap oneself’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel. Here: ‘f. covered’
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- 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”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would 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”).
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).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H5968 appears — 5 distinct verses across 5 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Amos 1 verse
Jonah 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.
The Hebrew verb עלף centers on the idea of “to cover.” It is rare — just 5 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 38:14. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Pual, Hithpael, and more). Sharing its root, it stands alongside עלפה. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5968 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 1 verse 20%
- Song of Solomon 1 verse 20%
- Isaiah 1 verse 20%
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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 60%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 20%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 20%
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: Faint 1×, Have fainted 1×, He fainted 1×
- American Standard Version: Faint 1×, Have fainted 1×, He fainted 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Bedecked 1×, Covered her face 1×, Have fainted 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Are enwrapped 1×, Covered 1×, He became faint 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5968 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H5968 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5968 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H5968 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel) and Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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.
Pual
- Pt. f. covered, encrusted, cstr. מְעֻלֶּפֶת Ct 5:14 his belly of ivory encrusted with sapphires. Pf. 3 pl. בָּנַיִךְ עֻלְּפוּ Is 51:20 thy sons are enshrouded, enwrapped, i.e. their senses obscured = have swooned away; so also Ez 31:15, reading 3 fs. עֻלָּ֑פָה for subst. עֻלְפֶּה (Köii. 1, 113), all the trees have fainted for (עַל) him (so 𝔊 𝔖 𝔙 Hi Co al.). e.g. Song of Solomon 5:14
Hithpael
- enwrap oneself, Impf. 3 fs. וַתִּתְעַלָּ֑ף Gn 38:14 (J); = swoon away, 3 ms. וַיִּתְעַלָּ֑ף Jon 4:8; 3 fpl. תִּתְעַלַּפְנָה Am 8:13. e.g. Genesis 38:14
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
vb. cover (NH id., cover, faint; Arabic غَلَفَ smear, ii. cover, غِلَافٌ sheath; Assyrian elpitu, pining, exhaustion);—
— 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.
עָלַף I
- , II), Pi. עִילֵּף to enclose, encase (cmp. Arab. ġalaf).—Part. pass. מְעוּלָּף; f. מְעוּלֶּפֶת. Gen. R. s. 54 המע׳ מבין שני וכ׳ thou (Ark) encased between the two Cherubs; (Midr. Sam. ch. XII המפוארה בשני כרובים; Ab. Zar. 24ᵇ מפוארת בעדי עדיים).
עָלַף II
- to turn, change.
- (interch. with הִתְעַלְפֶּה, formed fr. a noun עלפה, v. Ez. XXXI, 15) e.g. Ezekiel 31:15
- 1. to change off, take turns. Tosef. Taan. I, 8 ולא היו מִתְעַלְּפִין עליה וכ׳ they did not change off (in watching) over it, but one sat &c.
- 2. to be overcome, faint, swoon. Ḥull. 3ᵇ שחט לפנינו … ולא נ׳ when he cut in our (the judges’) presence, without being overcome (his hand not trembling); ib. שמא יִתְעַלֵּף (Ar. יִתְעַלְפֶּה) lest his hand tremble; ib. ברי לי שלא נִתְעַלַּפְתִּי I am sure that my hand did not tremble. Sabb. 9ᵇ שמא יתעלפה he may swoon (in the vapor bath). Nidd. 69ᵇ שמא יתעלפה he may be in a swoon (and not really dead). Midr. Sam. ch. XXIII ומִתְעַלְּפִים, v. עוּף I; a. e.
- same. Part. מְעוּלָּף; f. מְעוּלֶּפֶת; pl. מְעוּלָּפִים, עוּלָּפִין; מְאוּלָּפוֹת. Mekh. B’shall. Shir., s. 6 לא מוציאין ולא מכניסין מע׳ מריח הים neither inhaling nor exhaling, being overcome by the smell of the sea; Yalk. Ex. 248; Yalk. Job 927.—Cant. R. to V, 14 (ref. to מעלפת, ib.) מעולפ׳ כחן וכ׳ (through the study of the Law) the strength of man is broken, though it had been as hard as sapphires; [prob. to be read: מְעַלֶּפֶת (Pi.) it makes faint &c.].
עֲלַף
- ; Pa. עַלֵּף to be overcome with weakness. Ḥull. 3ᵇ לעַלּוּפֵי לא חיישינן we do not apprehend a sudden weakness of hands in slaughtering.
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 5 distinct written forms H5968 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/יִּתְעַלָּ֑ף | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Jonah 4:8 | 1 |
| וַ/תִּתְעַלָּ֔ף | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Genesis 38:14 | 1 |
| מְעֻלֶּ֖פֶת | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Song of Solomon 5:14 | 1 |
| עֻלְּפ֥וּ | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 51:20 | 1 |
| תִּ֠תְעַלַּפְנָה | Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural | Amos 8:13 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5968, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 5 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.
