עֵץ
tree
also: wood, timber, stock, plank 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
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H6086 appears in the Book of Deuteronomy — 16 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.
Deuteronomy
- Deuteronomy 4:28 עֵ֣ץ n c ms There you shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
- Deuteronomy 10:1 עֵֽץ n c ms At that time Yahweh said to me, Hew you two tables of stone like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood.
- Deuteronomy 10:3 עֲצֵ֣י n c mp cs So I made an ark of acacia wood, and hewed two tables of stone like the first, and went up onto the mountain, having the two tables in my hand.
- Deuteronomy 12:2 עֵ֥ץ n c ms You shall surely destroy all the places in which the nations that you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains, and on the hills, and under every green tree:
- Deuteronomy 16:21 עֵ֑ץ n c ms You shall not plant you an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of Yahweh your God, which you shall make you.
- Deuteronomy 19:5 עֵצִים֒ הָ/עֵ֔ץ הָ/עֵ֔ץ n c mp ptcl def.art + n c ms ptcl def.art + n c ms as when a man goes into the forest with his neighbor to hew wood, and his hand fetches a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slips from the handle, and lights on his neighbor, so that he dies; he shall flee to one of these cities and live:
- Deuteronomy 20:19 עֵצָ/הּ֙ עֵ֣ץ n c ms cs + sfx pers 3fs n c ms cs When you shall besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, you shall not destroy the trees of it by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, and you shall not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of you?
- Deuteronomy 20:20 עֵ֣ץ עֵ֤ץ n c ms n c ms cs Only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down; and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it fall.
- Deuteronomy 21:22 עֵֽץ n c ms If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree;
- Deuteronomy 21:23 הָ/עֵ֗ץ ptcl def.art + n c ms his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he who is hanged is accursed of God; that you don't defile your land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance.
- Deuteronomy 22:6 עֵ֣ץ n c ms If a bird's nest chance to be before you in the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the hen sitting on the young, or on the eggs, you shall not take the hen with the young:
- Deuteronomy 28:36 עֵ֥ץ n c ms Yahweh will bring you, and your king whom you shall set over you, to a nation that you have not known, you nor your fathers; and there shall you serve other gods, wood and stone.
- Deuteronomy 28:42 עֵצְ/ךָ֖ n c ms cs + sfx pers 2ms All your trees and the fruit of your ground shall the locust possess.
- Deuteronomy 28:64 עֵ֥ץ n c ms Yahweh will scatter you among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, which you have not known, you nor your fathers, even wood and stone.
- Deuteronomy 29:11 עֵצֶ֔י/ךָ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms your little ones, your wives, and your foreigner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water;
- Deuteronomy 29:17 עֵ֣ץ n c ms and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them);
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.
עץ — transliterated ʻêts — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “tree.” Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 1:11. Spanning 288 verses in 30 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. Alongside “tree” the lexicon also lists “wood”, “timber”, and “stock” — part of its full sense range. Sharing its root, it stands alongside עצה, עצה and אע. See the sense tree, 288-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6086 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 →
- 288
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 288 distinct verses.
- 30 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 30 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #148
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 148 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 288 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 288 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 129 verses · 45%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 97 verses · 34%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 62 verses · 22%
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†: Wood 98×, Tree 63×, Trees 45×
- American Standard Version†: Wood 89×, Tree 49×, Trees 26×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Wood 102×, Trees 59×, Tree 52×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Wood 80×, Tree 59×, Trees 47×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6086 across 326† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 35 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6086 across 317† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 60 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 8 further occurrences.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6086 across 307† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 29 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 22 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6086 across 342† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 28 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
9 senses and sub-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 9 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.
- a. a standing tree Gn 18:4, 8 (J) +, Ex 15:25 (J; of shrub?), Je 17:18 = ψ 1:3 (sim.); to be felled Dt 19:5; 2 K 6:6; הָעֵצִים (appar. incl. vine and bramble) in allegory Ju 9:8 + 6 times Ju 9; עֵץ הַחַיִּים †Gn 2:9; 3:22, 24 (J), cf. ע׳ חַיִּים, fig. of source of (life and) happiness †Pr 3:18; 11:30; 13:12; 15:4; ע׳ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע Gn 2:9, 16 (J); עֲצֵי (ה)יַעַר Is 7:2 (sim.), 44:14; Ez 15:2 +; עֲצֵי הַשָּׂדֶה Is 55:12; Ez 17:24 (fig.), +; עֲצֵי לְבָנוֹן 2 Ch 2:7; עֲצֵי־מַיִם †Ez 31:14; עֲצֵי י׳ †ψ 104:16; עֲצֵי עֵדֶן †Ez 31:9, 16, 18(×2); עֲצֵי לְבוֹנָה Ct 4:14; of vine עֵץ הַגֶּפֶן †Ez 15:2, 6; תַּחַת כָּל־עֵץ רַעֲנָ֑ן place of illicit worship †Dt 12:2; Je 2:20; 3:6, 13; 1 K 14:23; 2 K 16:4; 17:10; Ez 6:13; Is 57:5; 2 Ch 28:4, cf. עַל־עֵץ רַעֲנָן Je 17:2; כָּל־עֵץ עָבֹת Ez 20:28. e.g. Genesis 18:4
- b. coll. trees, עֵץ־הַגָּן Gn 2:16; 3:1, 2, 8 (all J); usually later, ע׳ 1:12, 29(×2) (P), +; עֵץ פְּרִי fruit-bearing trees Gn 1:11 (P), ψ 148:9, cf. Ec 2:5, פְּרִי עֵץ Ex 10:15 (J), Ez 36:30 Lv 23:40 (H), cf. Jo 2:22; עֵץ־מַאֲכָל Dt 20:20; Lv 19:23 (H), Ez 47:12; Ne 9:25; עֵץ הַזַּיִת Hg 2:19 olive trees, עֵץ שֶׁמֶן Ne 8:15, עֵץ־שָׁ֑מֶן Is 41:19; סֲבָךְ־עֵץ ψ 74:5 thicket of trees; עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה Ex 9:25 (J), +; עֵץ הַיַּעַר †Ez 15:6, cf. Is 10:19; 44:23; כִּימֵי הָעֵץ Is 65:22 (sim. of great age). e.g. Genesis 2:16
- c. pl. of trees felled for building, 1 K 5:20, 32 (+ אֲבָנִים); עֲצֵי אֲרָזִים 2 S 5:11 = 1 Ch 14:1 + 7 times; עֲצֵי בְרוֹשׁים 1 K 5:22, 24; 9:11; (אַלְגּ׳) עֲצֵי אַלְמֻגִּים, v. אַלְגּ׳ p. 38 supr. e.g. 1 Kings 5:20
- a. wood, as material; for building, 2 K 12:13 (+ אַבְנֵי מַחְצֵב), 22:6 = 2 Ch 34:11 (both + id.), Ne 2:8 +; עֲצֵי שָׁ֑מֶן 1 K 6:23, 31, 33 cf. v 32; עֲצֵי־גֹּפֶר Gn 6:14 (Noah’s ark), עֲצֵי שִׁטּים Ex 25:5, 10 + 20 times Ex (of tabern. and its furniture; all P) Dt 10:3; מִגְדַּל־עֵץ Ne 8:4; מוֹטֹת עֵץ Je 28:13 (in fig.; opp. מ׳ בַּרְזֶל); כְּלִי־עֵץ article of wood Lv 11:32; 15:12 Nu 31:20, cf. 35:18 (all P). Hence e.g. 2 Kings 12:13
- b. עֵצִים = articles of wood Ex 7:19 (P; ‖ אֲבָנִים), 1 Ch 29:2; so עֲצֵי בְרוֹשִׁים 2 S 6:5 (but v. בְּרוֹשׁ ad fin.); specif. הָעֵץ = helve of axe Dt 19:5; עֵץ חֲנִית(וֹ) 1 S 17:7 Qr (Kt חֵץ) = 1 Ch 20:5; 2 S 21:19; 23:7; עֲצֵי הָעֲגָלָה 1 S 6:14 (i.e. wood of which cart was made), עֲצֵי הָאֲשֵׁרָה Ju 6:26; especially timbers of a house Zc 5:4; Hb 2:11; Lv 14:45, of a city 1 K 15:22 = 2 Ch 16:5; Ez 26:12; עֵץ of pole on which bodies of slain (criminals and others) were exposed (perhaps orig. tree) Gn 40:19 (E), Jos 8:29(×2); 10:26(×2), 27 (all JE), Dt 21:22, 23; late (in Pers.) used for executing criminals (? by hanging = gallows), תָּלָה עַל־עֵץ Est 2:23 + 8 times Est. e.g. Exodus 7:19
- c. of idols, עֵץ וָאֶבֶן Dt 4:28; 28:36, 64; 29:16; 2 K 19:18 = Is 37:19; Ez 20:32, cf. Je 2:27; 3:9; Hb 2:19; so עֵץ alone Ho 4:12; Is 40:20, cf. 44:19; 45:20; אֲשֵׁרָה כָּל־עֵץ Dt 16:21. e.g. Deuteronomy 4:28
- d. (fire-)wood Jos 9:23, 27 (J), v 21 (P), Dt 19:5; Is 30:33 +, read עֵצִים also Ez 24:5 (for MT עצמים Bö Ew Sm Co Berthol Toy; especially for sacrifices 1 K 18:23(×2) +, Gn 22:7, 9(×2) Lv 1:7 + 6 times Lv (all P), 2 S 24:22 ‖ 1 Ch 21:23, +; עֲצֵי עוֹלָה Gn 22:3, 6 (P). e.g. Joshua 9:23
- e. עֵץ (הָ)אֶרֶז cedar-wood, used in purifications Lv 14:4, 6, 49, 51, 52; Nu 19:6 (all P). e.g. Leviticus 14:4
- f. פִּשְׁתֵּי הָעֵץ Jos 2:6 woody-flax, i.e. flax on the stalk.—Je 10:8 Gie proposes הֶבֶל מֹעֲצֹתָו for MT הֲבָלִים עֵץ הוּא.—מֹאֶסֶת כָּל־עֵץ Ez 21:15 is dub., Sm proposes מָאַסְתָּ כָל־עֵץ, Co מֹאֲסֵי כָל־עֹוֹ, Berthol וּמְאַסֵּף כָּל־עַז; SiegfKau Toy leave untranslated. e.g. Joshua 2:6
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
n.m. Gn 2: 9 tree, trees, wood;—ע׳ abs. Gn 3:3 +, cstr. 3:24 +, עֵץ־ 2:16 +; sf. עֵצְיךָ Dt 28:42, etc.; pl. עֵצִים Ju 9:8 +, cstr. עֲצֵי Is 7:2 +, sf. עֵצֶיךָ Dt 29:10, עֵצֵינוּ La 5:4, etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עצה (ʻâtsâh) (H6095) — to shut.
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.
עֵץ
- 2. tree, pole; wood. Esth. R. to V, 12 לאחר שעשה העץ after having made the gallows. Tam. II, 3, a. fr. עץ שמן pine-wood. Gen. R. s. 15 אילן שעֵצוֹ נאכל וכ׳ a tree whose wood is as fit to eat as its fruit. Sifra Emor, Par. 12, ch. XVI, v. עָנָף; a. v. fr.—Pes. 30ᵇ עץ פרור wooden pot-ladle.—Pl. עֵצִים; constr. עֲצֵי. Tam. l. c. כל הע׳ כשרין וכ׳ all kinds of wood are fit for the altar pile. Ib. 5 עצי תאנה wood of a fig-tree. R. Hash. II, 3 עצי שמן, v. supra; a. v. fr.
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 110 distinct written forms H6086 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 50 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6086, 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
Shares the same root
Derived from this word
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 → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 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 268 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 288 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 1:11
- Exodus 7:19
- Leviticus 1:7
- Numbers 13:20
- Deuteronomy 4:28
- Joshua 2:6
- Judges 6:26
- 1 Samuel 6:14
- 2 Samuel 5:11
- 1 Kings 5:10
- 2 Kings 3:19
- 1 Chronicles 14:1
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.
