עֵ֫פֶר
Epher
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Epher’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H6081 appears — 4 distinct verses across 2 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
1 Chronicles 3 verses
- 1 Chronicles 1:33 וָ/עֵ֨פֶר֙ conj + n Proper The sons of Midian: Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the sons of Keturah.
- 1 Chronicles 4:17 וְ/עֵ֣פֶר conj + n Proper The sons of Ezrah: Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and Jalon; and she bore Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of Eshtemoa.
- 1 Chronicles 5:24 וְ/עֵ֡פֶר conj + n Proper These were the heads of their fathers' houses: even Epher, and Ishi, and Eliel, and Azriel, and Jeremiah, and Hodaviah, and Jahdiel, mighty men of valor, famous men, heads of their fathers' houses.
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.
עפר (ʻÊpher) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Epher.” With only 4 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. 1 Chronicles dominates its distribution — 3 of 4 verses. It first appears in Genesis 25:4. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6081 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Chronicles 3 verses 75%
- Genesis 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 75%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 25%
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: Epher 4×
- American Standard Version: Epher 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Epher 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Epher 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6081 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6081 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6081 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6081 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. ‘son’ of Midian
- 2. in Judah
- 3. in Manasseh
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
Derived from עפר (ʻôpher) (H6082) — fawn.
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.
עֹפֶר
- , pl. עֳפָרִים, v. עוֹפֶר.
עָפַר
- , Pi. עִיפֵּר (b. h.; to cast dust, cover with mud.
- to be soiled. Lam. R. introd. (R. Abbahu 6) והם ישנים … ומִתְעַפְּרִים בעפר they sleep on the bare earth and become soiled with dust; ib. to III, 13.
עָפָר
- עפר to be thick, dust, mud, sand, mortar. Gen. R. s. 14 (ref. to Gen. II, 7) ע׳ זכר אדמה נקבה היוצר מביא ע׳ זכר וכ׳ ‘afar represents the male element, ădamah, the female; the potter takes male dust (coarse sand) and female earth (soft clay), in order that the vessels be strong. Sot. II, 2 נוטל ע׳ מתחתיה he (the priest) takes earth from under it (the marble slab). Ib. 16ᵃ מצינו אפר שקרוי ע׳ we find that ashes are likewise called ‘afar; Ḥull. 88ᵇ; Gen. R. s. 49ᵇ. Ib. עֲפַר סוטה the dust used in preparing the Water of Jealousy; עֲ׳ כיסוי the earth or ashes used for covering up the blood at slaughtering (Lev. XVII, 13); Num. R. s. 9. Ib. זכתה … ואנכי ע׳ ואפר לא זכתה תחזור לעַפְרָהּ if she is worthy (innocent), let a son descend from her like Abraham, of whom it is written, ‘And I am dust and ashes’ (Gen. XVIII, 27); if she is unworthy, let her return to her native dust. Ib. עֲ׳ זהב העגל the gold dust of the calf. Y. B. Mets. VIII, end, 11ᵈ ע׳ שחור black potter’s earth; a. fr.—Gen. R. s. 94 עַפְרוֹ של יצחק (ed. Wil. אֶפְרוֹ), v. אֵפֶר.—Pl. עֲפָרוֹת, constr. עַפְרוֹת. Num. R. l. c. (ref. to ומן העפר, Num. V, 17) [read:] זהו ע׳ הזהב אשר טחן this refers to the gold dust which he (Moses) made by grinding (Deut. IX, 21). Gen. R. s. 26 שהיו בקיאים בע׳ וכ׳ they were experts on the qualities of soil like serpents; a. e. e.g. Genesis 2:7
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 3 distinct written forms H6081 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וָ/עֵ֨פֶר֙ | Noun, Proper | Genesis 25:4 | 2 |
| וְ/עֵ֡פֶר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 5:24 | 1 |
| וְ/עֵ֣פֶר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:17 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6081, 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 → 2 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 (Epher). 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
A calf. (1.) One of the sons of Midian, who was Abraham's son by Keturah (Gen. 25:4).
(2.) The head of one of the families of trans-Jordanic Manasseh who were carried captive by Tiglath-pileser (1 Chr. 5:24).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
+ A son of Ezra, among the descendants of Judah. (1 Chronicles 4:17) + One of the heads of the families of Manasseh on the east of Jordan. (1 Chronicles 5:24)
(a calf), the second, in order, of the sons of Midian. (Genesis 25:4; 1 Chronicles 1:33) (B.C. 1820).
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
dust; lead
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
