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אָסָא

Asa

BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Asa’ fuller range ↓

H609 Strong's Hebrew
ʼÂçâʼ Transliteration
/aw-saw'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 58 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

אסא (ʼÂçâʼ) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Asa.” It first appears in 1 Kings 15:8. It turns up in 52 verses across 4 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in 2 Chronicles, which alone accounts for 48% of its uses. For the data behind this summary, explore 52-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Asa
Modern gloss
Asa
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H609 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 →

52
distinct verses
The word appears in 52 distinct verses.
4 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
1 Kings 15:8
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in 1 Kings 15:8.
Jeremiah 41:9
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Jeremiah 41:9.
#658
by frequency
Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 658 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 52 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 51 · 98%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 1 · 2%

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 52 distinct verses.

  • Writings (Ketuvim) 27 verses · 52%
  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 25 verses · 48%

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: Asa 52×, Between asa 2×
  • American Standard Version: Asa 51×, Between asa 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Asa 44×, Asa’s 13×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Asa 57×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H609 across 58 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asa” 52×
  • “Between asa” 2×

Plus 4 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 H609 across 58 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asa” 51×
  • “Between asa” 2×

Plus 5 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 H609 across 57 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asa” 44×
  • “Asa’s” 13×

Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H609 across 58 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Asa” 57×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


Senses in BDB

The 3 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.

  1. Asa = "healer: injurious (?)"
  2. king of Judah, son of Abijam, father of Jehoshaphat
  3. a Levite

Word origin

n.pr.m. (perhaps healer) I king of Judah, son of Abijam and father of Jehoshaphat 1 K 15:8, 9, 11 + 24 times 1 K 15; 16; 22; 1 Ch 3:10 2 Ch 13:23 + 28 times 2 Ch 14–21; Je 41:9. Perhaps apoc. theophoric name, cf. רְפָאֵל. Also son of Elkanah and father of Berechiah 1 Ch 9:16.

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Origin: of uncertain derivation

Part of speech: Proper Name Masculine


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.

אסא

  • to heal, v. אֲסִי.

אַסָּא

  • (?) (infin. of אסי, as noun) healing, remedy. Targ. Jer. XIV, 19 (Regia אַסּוּ). Targ. II. Chr. XXI, 18 דְּלֵית א׳ incurable

אַסָּא ²

  • (preced.) physician. Targ. O. Ex. XV, 26 אַסָּךְ (אָסָךְ); Y. אַסְאָךְ thy &c. V. אָסֵי, אַסְיָא.

אָסָא III

  • (contr. of אדסא, v. הדס) myrtle. Targ. II, Esth. II, 7; a. e. R. Hash. 23ᵃ הדס א׳ hadas (Is. XLI, 19) is asa. Pes. 56ᵃ א׳ רדא׳ Ar., Ms. O. (ed. דרא) fresh (moist) myrtle. Ber. 9ᵇ דאמטיית א׳ וכ׳ you had to carry a myrtle-tree to the palace (when forced into public labor, v. אַנְגַרְיָא). Snh. 44ᵃ (prov.) א׳ דקאי ביני וכ׳ a myrtle between willows still is a myrtle by name, and people call it a myrtle.—Pl. אָסַיָּא. Targ. Esth. VIII, 15.—Nidd. 37ᵃ (Rashi, sing.) e.g. Esther 2:7

*אָסָא

  • (v. אסי, cmp. יָשִׁישׁ, יָשָׁן, אשונא &c.) old. Gitt. 69ᵃ א׳ כלבא (Ar. אשא) old dog (in a charm formula); v. אכסא. Cmp. Assyr. āsi Kalbi, V, R. 8, 12.

אֲסִי

  • (sec. r. of אוס, v. אנס; cmp. יש, איש, אינש &c.; v. Ges. H. Dict. s. vv. אשׁה, עשׂה) to be strong, well. [Act. v. to make well, v. infra a. אָסֵי.]
    • to cure. Targ. O. Gen. XX, 17 (Targ. Y. אָסֵי); a. fr.—Part. מַסֵּי, מְאַסֵּי.—Ned. 49ᵃ לאַסָּיֵיה, לאַסָּאָה יתיה to cure him. Sabb. 111ᵃ איכא מכה מסי where there is a wound, it (the vinegar) heals it. Lev. R. s. 16, end, read: מְאַסִּינָא ליה לגרמי I shall cure him all alone. Gitt. 56ᵇ מסיין = מאסיין, v. next w.
    • to be cured, to recover. Targ. Josh. V, 8; a. fr.—Sabb. 33ᵃ. Gitt. 12ᵇ דבעי אִתְּסוּיֵי ביה for he wants to get cured with the money he receives as damages. Yoma 84ᵃ אִיתְּסָאִי I got cured. Keth. 62ᵇ איתסיאת she grew well. Koh. R. to I, 8 he went &c. מִיתְאַסְּיָא in order to be cured. Cmp. וֶסֶת.

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 16 distinct written forms H609 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
לְ/אָסָ֖א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:17 8
אָסָ֖א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:9 7
אָסָ֗א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:14 6
אָסָ֜א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:22 6
אָסָ֥א Noun, Proper 1 Chronicles 3:10 6
אָסָ֔א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:22 5
אָסָא֙ Noun, Proper 1 Chronicles 9:16 5
אָסָ֛א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:11 3
אָ֠סָא Noun, Proper 1 Kings 15:18 2
אָסָ֣א Noun, Proper 1 Kings 22:46 2
אָסָֽא Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 15:10 2
לְ/אָסָא֙ Noun, Proper 1 Kings 16:15 2
אָסָ֡א Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 16:12 1
אָסָא֒ Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 15:2 1
וְ/אָסָ֣א Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 16:6 1
לְ/אָסָ֗א Noun, Proper 2 Chronicles 14:8 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H609, 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.

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.


Bible dictionary

Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Asa). 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

Physician, son of Abijah and grandson of Rehoboam, was the third king of Judah. He was zealous in maintaining the true worship of God, and in rooting all idolatry, with its accompanying immoralities, out of the land (1 Kings 15:8-14). The Lord gave him and his land rest and prosperity. It is recorded of him, however, that in his old age, when afflicted, he "sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians" (comp. Jer. 17:5). He died in the forty-first year of his reign, greatly honoured by his people (2 Chr. 16:1-13), and was succeeded by his son Jehoshaphat.

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(physician, or cure).

+ Son of Abijah and third king of Judah. (B.C. 956-916.) (His long reign of 41 years was peaceful in its earlier portion, and he undertook the reformation of all abuses, especially of idolatry. He burnt the symbol of his grandmother Maachah's religion and deposed her from the dignity of "king's mother,") and renewed the great altar which the idolatrous priests apparently had desecrated. (2 Chronicles 15:8) Besides this he fortified cities on his frontiers, and raised an army, amounting, according to (2 Chronicles 14:8) to 580,000 men, a number probably exaggerated by an error of the copyist. During Asa's reign, Zerah, at the head of an enormous host, (2 Chronicles 14:9) attacked Mareshah. There he was utterly defeated, and driven back with immense loss to Gerar. The peace which followed this victory was broken by the attempt of Baasha of Israel to fortify Ramah. To stop this Asa purchased the help of Benhadad I. king of Damascus, by a large payment of treasure, forced Baasha to abandon his purpose, and destroyed the works which he had begun at Ramah. In his old age Asa suffered from gout, He died, greatly loved and honored, in the 41st year of his reign. + Ancestor of Berechiah a Levite who resided in one of the villages of the Netophathites after the return from Babylon. (1 Chronicles 9:16)

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

physician; cure

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 51 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 52 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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