עֹ֫פֶל
hill
also: mound, fort, stronghold, Ophel fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 4 times (44%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 2 times (22%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (22%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 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 H6076 appears — 9 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.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
1 Samuel 5 verses
- 1 Samuel 5:6 ב/עפלים prep det + n c mp But the hand of Yahweh was heavy on them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and struck them with tumors, even Ashdod and the borders of it.
- 1 Samuel 5:9 עפלים n c mp It was so, that after they had carried it about, the hand of Yahweh was against the city with a very great confusion: and he struck the men of the city, both small and great; and tumors broke out on them.
- 1 Samuel 5:12 ב/עפלים prep det + n c mp The men who didn't die were struck with the tumors; and the cry of the city went up to heaven.
- 1 Samuel 6:4 עפלי n c mp cs Then they said, "What shall be the trespass-offering which we shall return to him?" They said, "Five golden tumors, and five golden mice, [according to] the number of the lords of the Philistines; for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.
- 1 Samuel 6:5 עפלי/כם n c mp cs + sfx pers 2mp Therefore you shall make images of your tumors, and images of your mice that mar the land; and you shall give glory to the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land.
2 Kings 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Micah 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.
עפל (ʻôphel) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “hill.” It clusters heavily in 1 Samuel, which alone accounts for 56% of its uses. It turns up in 9 verses across 5 books, an uncommon footprint. Scripture first uses it in Deuteronomy 28:27. Ranging over 2 senses, its meaning includes “mound”, “fort”, and “stronghold”. 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 H6076 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 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 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 5 verses 56%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 11%
- 2 Kings 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 89%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 11%
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†: Forts 1×, Strong hold 1×, Tower 1×
- American Standard Version†: Hill 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Tumors 6×, Hill 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Tumors 4×, Hill 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6076 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 6 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6076 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6076 across 9† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6076 across 8† 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.
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.
- hill, mound, fort, stronghold, Ophel
- tumour, hemorrhoid
Word origin
I. n. [m.] mound, hill, only as acropolis;—ע׳ abs. 2 K 5:24 +, cstr. Mi 4:8;—fortified mound or hill within city, of Jerus. (cf. RobBR i. 267 GuZPVv (1882), 326) Mi 4:8; Is 32:14; S. end of eastern hill Ne 3:26; 11:21; 2 Ch 33:14 חוֹמַת הָע׳ Ne 3:27; 2 Ch 27:3 (cf. חמת העפל in קרחה MI21.22); of Samaria 2 K 5:24.
II. n.m. 1 S 6:4 hemorrhoid;—only pl. Kt (בָּ)עֳפָלִים Dt 28:27; 1 S 5:6, 9, 12; cstr. עָפְלֵי 6:4; sf. עָפְלֵיכֶם v 5; Qr in all (ב)טְחֹרִים, טְחֹרֵי, טְחֹרֵיכֶם, v. [טְחוֹר].
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עפל (ʻâphal) (H6075) — to swell.
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.
עָפַל
- (b. h.) to swell, rise.—V. עוֹפֶל.
- to act rashly, be foolhardy. Sabb. 97ᵃ מן המַעְפִּילִים הוה Ms. M. (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note; ed. מִוַּיַּעְפִּילוּ) he was one of the foolhardy (Num. XIV, 44); Yalk. Num. 749 המַעְפִּילִין. e.g. Numbers 14:44
עֹפֶל
- , v. עוֹפֶל
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 H6076 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ב/עפלים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 5:6 | 2 |
| הָ/עֹ֔פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 5:24 | 1 |
| ו/ב/עפלים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Deuteronomy 28:27 | 1 |
| עֹ֛פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Micah 4:8 | 1 |
| עֹ֣פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 32:14 | 1 |
| עפלי | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | 1 Samuel 6:4 | 1 |
| עפלי/כם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | 1 Samuel 6:5 | 1 |
| עפלים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 5:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6076, 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.
Compare all same-root words → 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 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
