עָצַר
to restrain
also: retain, close up, shut, withhold fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘restrain’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”). Here: ‘be restrained’
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
6 verses where H6113 appears in the Qal stem in the Book of 2 Chronicles. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
2 Chronicles
- 2 Chronicles 2:6 יַעֲצָר Qal impf 3ms But who is able to build him a house, seeing heaven and the heaven of heavens can't contain him? who am I then, that I should build him a house, save only to burn incense before him?
- 2 Chronicles 7:13 אֶֽעֱצֹ֤ר Qal impf 1cs If I shut up the sky so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;
- 2 Chronicles 13:20 עָצַ֧ר Qal pf 3ms Neither did Jeroboam recover strength again in the days of Abijah: and Yahweh struck him, and he died.
- 2 Chronicles 14:11 יַעְצֹ֥ר Qal juss 3ms Asa cried to Yahweh his God, and said, Yahweh, there is none besides you to help, between the mighty and him who has no strength: help us, Yahweh our God; for we rely on you, and in your name are we come against this multitude. Yahweh, you are our God; don't let man prevail against you.
- 2 Chronicles 20:37 עָצְר֖וּ Qal pf 3cp Then Eliezer the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, Because you have joined yourself with Ahaziah, Yahweh has destroyed your works. The ships were broken, so that they were not able to go to Tarshish.
- 2 Chronicles 22:9 לַ/עְצֹ֥ר prep + Qal inf.cs He sought Ahaziah, and they caught him (now he was hiding in Samaria), and they brought him to Jehu, and killed him; and they buried him, for they said, He is the son of Jehoshaphat, who sought Yahweh with all his heart. The house of Ahaziah had no power to hold the kingdom.
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.
The Hebrew verb עצר centers on the idea of “to restrain.” Where the King James Version says “is shut up,” newer translations reach for “and” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 45 verses across 16 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its moderately common vocabulary. Debuting at Genesis 16:2, it then recurs through the corpus. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). Dig into 45-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6113 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 →
- 45
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 45 distinct verses.
- 16 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 16 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #796
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 796 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 45 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 7 verses 16%
- 1 Kings 4 verses 9%
- 2 Kings 4 verses 9%
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 45 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 20 verses · 44%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 18 verses · 40%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 16%
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: Is shut up 5×, Was stayed 5×, May be stayed 2×
- American Standard Version: Was stayed 5×, Is shut up 4×, Shut up 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Both slave 4×, Was halted 3×, Are shut 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 5×, Was restrained 3×, Are restrained 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6113 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 32 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 H6113 across 46 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 35 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 H6113 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 31 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6113 across 61 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 39 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
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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 4 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.
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. ע׳ Gn 20:18 +, sf. עֲצָרַנִי 16:2; 1 s. עָצַרְתִּי Dn 10:8, 16, etc.; Impf. 3 ms. יַעְצֹר 1 S 9:17 +, יַעְצָר־ 2 Ch 2:5; sf. יַעֲצָרְכָה 1 K 18:44, etc.; Inf. abs. עָצֹר Gn 20:18, cstr. לַעְצֹר 2 Ch 22:9, וַעְצֹר Jb 4:2 (Ges§ 28 b); Pt. pass. עָצוּר Je 33:1 +, etc.;— e.g. Genesis 20:18
- 1. restrain, c. acc. pers. Gn 16:2 (J; + מִן, i.e. prevent), עָצֹר עָצַר בְּעַד כָּל־רֶחֶם 20:18 (E), cf. abs. Is 66:9 (opp. מוֹלִיד); sq. inf. 2 K 4:24; c. acc. pers. alone 1 K 18:44 hinder, stop; c. acc. of sky (hindering rain) Dt 11:17; 2 Ch 7:13; pt. pass. abs. shut up, or hindered (for reasons not given) Je 36:5; Ne 6:10 (? by a vow, or by ceremonial uncleanness, cf. RSSem i. 436 f., 2nd ed. 455 f.); = shut up (c. ב, in prison) 2 K 17:4, pt. pass. Je 33:1; 39:15, fig. 20:9; on עָצוּר וְעָזוּב (5 times), v. I. עזב; עֲצֻרָה לָנוּ 1 S 21:6 women have been kept away with ref. to us (cf. RSl.c.); עָצוּר מִפְּנֵי 1 Ch 12:1 kept away from before Saul; = detain, c. acc. Ju 13:15, 16; in Jb c. בְּ, ע׳ בְּמִלִּין 4:2, cf. 29:9, so בַּמַּיִם 12:15; ע׳ בְּעַמִּי 1 S 9:17 is rule over, etc. (si vera l.); ins. also (with other words) 10:1 𝔊 We Dr al. e.g. Genesis 16:2
- 2. (late) retain, c. acc. כֹּחַ 2 Ch 13:20; 22:9 Dn 10:8, 16; 11:6; + inf. = be able to 1 Ch 29:14 2 Ch 2:5; om. כֹּחַ 14:10 (+ עִמְּךָ), 20:37 (+ inf.). e.g. 2 Chronicles 13:20
Niphal
- be restrained, stayed, of plague: Pf. 3 fs. נֶעֱצָ֑רָה Nu 17:15; Impf. 3 fs. תֵּעָצַר 2 S 24:21 = 1 Ch 21:22, וַתֵּעָצַר Nu 17:13; 25:8 (P) 2 S 24:25 ψ 106:30; be shut up (of sky), Inf. cstr. בְּהֵעָצֵר 1 K 8:35 = 2 Ch 6:26; be under restraint or detention Pt. נֶעְצָר 1 S 21:8 + לִפְנֵי י׳ (? i.e. kept by a vow, cf. HPS and Ne 6:10 supr.). e.g. Numbers 17:15
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
vb. restrain, retain (NH id.; cf. prob. Assyrian eṣêru, retain, restrain, DlHWB 122 JägerBAS i.483 Zehnpfundib.500* cf. Assyrian uṣurtu, taboo SACJA, 1904, 754.; Ethiopic ዐጸረ: press, Arabic عَصَرَ; 𝔗 עֲצַר, Syriac ܥܨܰܪ id.);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
עָצַר
- [to press,] to close up; to detain; to ward off; to gather, store away. Succ. 38ᵃ עוֹצֶרֶת רוחות וכ׳ wards off evil winds and dews (v. infra). Num. R. s. 19 היאך יכול … וַעֲצָרוֹ how could the angel of death strike a man that had stood up against the angel of death and warded him off? (ref. to Num. XVII, 13). Sifré Num. 151; Yalk. ib. 782 (ref. to עצרת, Num. XXIX, 35) עֲצָרוֹ הכתוב מלצאת the Scripture keeps him (the pilgrim) from leaving (Jerusalem, on the eighth day). Pesik. R. (ed. Fr.) addit. s. 4; Pesik. Bayom, p. 193ᵇ הק"בה עוֹצֵר וכ׳ the Lord locks his Presence up with them, v. infra. Ab. Zar. 71ᵃ עול תחתי לעוֹצֵר, v. עָלַל; a. fr.—Part. pass. עָצוּר; f. עֲצוּרָה; pl. עֲצוּרִים, עְצוּרִין; עְצוּרוֹת. Sifré l. c. מה זה ע׳ מלצאת אף זה ע׳ וכ׳ as on this (the eighth day) one is prohibited to leave, so is one on this (the first day). Sifré Deut. 135 (ref. to עצרת, Deut. XVI, 8) יכול יהא אדם ע׳ כל וכ׳ from this you might infer that one must be confined the whole day in the schoolhouse (for religious exercises). Ib. מה שביעי ע׳ אף ששי ע׳ as the seventh day is under restrictions (as to week-day labor), so is the sixth day (i.e. the days intervening between the first and the seventh day); אי מה שביעי ע׳ מכל מלאכה וכ׳ you might infer from this that as the seventh day is under restriction as regards all sorts of labor (even work of necessity), so is the sixth; Ḥag. 18ᵃ השביעי ע׳ בכל מלאכה … ימים ע׳ וכ׳ the seventh day is under a general restriction, but the six days are not; Yalk. Deut. 904; ib. 907. Ḥull. 67ᵃ בורות … שהן ע׳ ככלים wells, pits and caves, the waters of which are restrained as in vessels; Yalk. Lev. 537 עצירים … בכלים (corr. acc.); a. fr. e.g. Numbers 17:13
- to be detained; to be gathered together. Pesik. R. l. c. כל זמן שישראל נֶעֱצָרִין וכ׳ as long as Israel holds festive gatherings in synagogues and schoolhouses, the Lord locks up &c. (v. supra); Pesik. l. c.ᵃ מְעַצְּרִין (Pi.). Yalk. Num. 782 (ref. to עצרת, v. supra) למה נֶעֶצְרוּ עיד יום אחד why are they detained one more day? Taan. 7ᵇ הגשמים נעצרין the rains are withheld. Ib. 8ᵃ השמים נעצרין מלהוריד וכ׳ the heavens are locked up so as not to let down rain &c.; a. fr.
- 1. to hold festive gatherings. Pesik. l. c., v. supra.
- 2. to detain, keep off. Succ. 37ᵇ כדי לעַצֵּר רוחות וכ׳ in order to keep off evil winds &c. (v. supra).
עֲצַר
- 1. to press, squeeze. Targ. Jud. VI, 38. Targ. Gen. XL, 11 (O. ed. Vien. עַצָּרִית, Pa.); a. fr.—Y. Sabb. XVII, 16ᵇ top; Y. Bets. I, 60ᵇ bot., v. זַיָּירָא.
- 2. to keep back, save. Y. Taan. III, 66ᵈ top עֲצוֹר וכ׳, v. גּוֹלְתָא.
עַצָּר
- m. = עָצוֹר. Targ. Am. IX, 13 ע׳ ענבין (not עֵצֶר, עֵצָר).
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 38 distinct written forms H6113 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 H6113, 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.
Derived from this word
- מעצור maʻtsôwr H4622 restraint
- מעצר maʻtsâr H4623 control
- עצר ʻetser H6114 restraint
- עצר ʻôtser H6115 restraint
- עצרה ʻătsârâh H6116 assembly
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 42 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 45 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 16:2
- Numbers 25:8
- Deuteronomy 11:17
- Judges 13:15
- 1 Samuel 9:17
- 2 Samuel 24:21
- 1 Kings 8:35
- 2 Kings 4:24
- 1 Chronicles 12:1
- 2 Chronicles 2:6
- Job 4:2
- Psalms 106:30
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.
