עָצוּם
mighty
also: vast, numerous 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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
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).
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 16 times (52%)
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 14 times (45%)
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct 1 time (3%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 31 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6099 appears — 31 distinct verses across 13 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
Exodus 1 verse
Numbers 3 verses
- Numbers 14:12 וְ/עָצ֖וּם conj + Adjective Adjective ms I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.
- Numbers 22:6 עָצ֥וּם adj Adjective ms Please come now therefore curse me this people; for they are too mighty for me: peradventure I shall prevail, that we may strike them, and that I may drive them out of the land; for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.
- Numbers 32:1 עָצ֣וּם adj Adjective ms Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle: and when they saw the land of Jazer, and the land of Gilead, that behold, the place was a place for cattle;
Deuteronomy 6 verses
- Deuteronomy 4:38 וַ/עֲצֻמִ֛ים conj + Adjective Adjective mp to drive out nations from before you greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as at this day.
- Deuteronomy 7:1 וַ/עֲצוּמִ֖ים conj + Adjective Adjective mp When Yahweh your God shall bring you into the land where you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than you;
- Deuteronomy 9:1 וַ/עֲצֻמִ֖ים conj + Adjective Adjective mp Hear, Israel: you are to pass over the Jordan this day, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to the sky,
- Deuteronomy 9:14 עָצ֥וּם adj Adjective ms let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under the sky; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.
- Deuteronomy 11:23 וַ/עֲצֻמִ֖ים conj + Adjective Adjective mp then will Yahweh drive out all these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves.
- Deuteronomy 26:5 עָצ֥וּם adj Adjective ms You shall answer and say before Yahweh your God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father; and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous.
Joshua 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 10:10 בַּ֝/עֲצוּמָ֗י/ו prep + Adjective Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 3ms The helpless are crushed, they collapse, They fall under his strength.
- Psalms 35:18 עָצ֣וּם adj Adjective ms I will give you thanks in the great assembly. I will praise you among many people.
- Psalms 135:10 עֲצוּמִֽים adj Adjective mp Who struck many nations, And killed mighty kings,
Proverbs 3 verses
- Proverbs 7:26 וַ֝/עֲצֻמִ֗ים conj + Adjective Adjective mp For she has thrown down many wounded. Yes, all her slain are a mighty host.
- Proverbs 18:18 עֲצוּמִ֣ים adj Adjective mp The lot settles disputes, And keeps strong ones apart.
- Proverbs 30:26 עָצ֑וּם adj Adjective ms The conies are but a feeble folk, Yet make they their houses in the rocks;
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 8:7 הָ/עֲצוּמִים֙ ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up on them the waters of the River, strong and many, [even] the king of Assyria and all his glory: and it shall come up over all its channels, and go over all its banks;
- Isaiah 53:12 עֲצוּמִים֮ adj Adjective mp Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
- Isaiah 60:22 עָצ֑וּם adj Adjective ms The little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation; I, Yahweh, will hasten it in its time.
Daniel 2 verses
- Daniel 8:24 עֲצוּמִ֖ים adj Adjective mp His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and do [his pleasure]; and he shall destroy the mighty ones and the holy people.
- Daniel 11:25 וְ/עָצ֖וּם conj + Adjective Adjective ms He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the king of the south shall war in battle with an exceeding great and mighty army; but he shall not stand; for they shall devise devices against him.
Joel 4 verses
- Joel 1:6 עָצ֖וּם adj Adjective ms For a nation has come up on my land, strong, and without number. His teeth are the teeth of a lion, And he has the fangs of a lioness.
- Joel 2:2 וְ/עָצ֔וּם conj + Adjective Adjective ms A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn spreading on the mountains, A great and strong people; There has never been the like, Neither will there be any more after them, Even to the years of many generations.
- Joel 2:5 עָצ֔וּם adj Adjective ms Like the noise of chariots on the tops of the mountains do they leap, Like the noise of a flame of fire that devours the stubble, As a strong people set in battle array.
- Joel 2:11 עָצ֖וּם adj Adjective ms Yahweh thunders his voice before his army; For his forces are very great; For he is strong who obeys his command; For the day of Yahweh is great and very awesome, And who can endure it?
Amos 1 verse
Micah 2 verses
- Micah 4:3 עֲצֻמִ֖ים adj Adjective mp And he will judge between many peoples, And will decide concerning strong nations afar off. They will beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, Neither will they learn war any more.
- Micah 4:7 עָצ֑וּם adj Adjective ms And I will make that which was lame a remnant, And that which was cast far off a strong nation: And Yahweh will reign over them on Mount Zion from then on, even forever.
Zechariah 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.
עצום (ʻâtsûwm) is a Hebrew adjective most often rendered “mighty.” Translators differ — “strong” in the King James Version, then “mighty” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 31 verses in 13 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Genesis 18:18. Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “vast” and “numerous”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6099 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 →
- 31
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 31 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,120
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,120 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 31 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 6 verses 19%
- Joel 4 verses 13%
- Numbers 3 verses 10%
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 31 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 12 verses · 39%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 11 verses · 35%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 26%
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: Strong 10×, Mightier 7×, Mighty 6×
- American Standard Version: Strong 9×, Mighty 5×, Mightier 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mighty 5×, Strong 5×, Powerful 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mighty 12×, Mightier 6×, Strong 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6099 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H6099 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 14 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 H6099 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 renderings that appear 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 H6099 across 31 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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 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.
- 1. mighty, especially of people, strong in numbers (often ‖ רַב, גָּדוֹל) Gn 18:18; Ex 1:9; Nu 14:12; 22:6 JE; Dt 4:38 + 6 times D, Mi 4:3, 7 Zc 8:22; Is 60:22 (opp. צָעִיר), of locusts Jo 1:6; 2:2, 5, cf. v 11; so of חַיִל Dn 11:25; עַם לֹא עָצוּם, i.e. feeble Pr 30:26 (of the שָׁפָן); less often of individ. מְלָכִים ע׳ ψ 135:10; of waters Is 8:7; ע׳ alone Pr 18:18 the mighty, Dn 8:24; ψ 10:10 his mighty ones (i.e. claws, of lion). e.g. Genesis 18:18
- 2. numerous, countless (all ‖ רַב): Am 5:12 ψ 35:18; as subst. = many Is 53:12; Pr 7:26. e.g. Amos 5:12
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
31 adj. mighty, numerous;—ע׳ Gn 18:18 +, pl. עֲצוּמִים Is 8:7 +, עֲצֻמִים Mi 4:3 +; sf. עֲצוּמָין ψ 10:10;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עצם (ʻâtsam) (H6105) — to be mighty.
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.
עָצוּם
- (b h.;strong, mighty.. Lam. R. to III, 4, v. עִיצּוּם.
עִצּוּם
- , v. עִיצּוּם
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 21 distinct written forms H6099 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6099, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 29 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 31 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 18:18
- Exodus 1:9
- Numbers 14:12
- Deuteronomy 4:38
- Joshua 23:9
- Psalms 135:10
- Proverbs 7:26
- Isaiah 8:7
- Daniel 8:24
- Joel 1:6
- Amos 5:12
- Micah 4:3
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.
