עֵר
Er
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Er’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H6147 appears in the Book of Numbers — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Numbers
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.
At its core, ער (ʻÊr) means “Er.” The word gravitates to Genesis (57%), then 1 Chronicles and Numbers. It turns up in 7 verses across 3 books, an uncommon footprint. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 38:3. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6147 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 4 verses 57%
- 1 Chronicles 2 verses 29%
- Numbers 1 verse 14%
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 7 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 71%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 29%
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: Er 8×, Were er 2×
- American Standard Version: Er 10×
- Berean Standard Bible: Er 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Er 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6147 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6147 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6147 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H6147 across 10 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 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. eldest son of Judah Gn 38:3, 6 = 1 Ch 2:3(×2), Gn 38:7; 46:12(×2) Nu 26:19(×2). e.g. Genesis 38:3
- 2. son of Judah’s son Shelah 1 Ch 4:21.—Vid. also Qal Pt. עֵר supr. e.g. 1 Chronicles 4:21
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.pr.m. Hρ (cf. עוּר Qal Pt.);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from עור (ʻûwr) (H5782) — to awake.
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.
עָר
- [stirring up,] hater. Gen. R. s. 37; Y. Ber. IV, 7ᵇ bot. שׁנ̇ע̇ר̇ ש̇ונ̇א וע̇ר̇ וכ׳ Babylonia is called Shinar, because she reared an enemy and hater of the Lord (Nebuchadnezzar); Yalk. Gen. 62 (not וצר); Lam. R. introd. (R. Josh. 2).—[Midr. Till. to Ps. CII, 18 שהיה ער, ed. Bub., v. עַרְעָר.]
עָר ²
- Lev. R. s. 26 [read:] הידא ליגבי שנאך הידא ליגבי עָרָךְ (v. הֵידָא) why dost thou call on thy enemy, why on thy adversary?; Midr. Sam. ch. XXIV הידא ליה גבי ערך הידא ליה גבי חברך (corr. acc.).
עֵר I
- awake, v. עוּר I.
עֵר II
- (b. h.) pr. n. m. Er, son of Judah and Tamar. Gen. R. s. 85 ער שהוער מן העולם his name was Er, because he was removed out of the world (died young); Yalk. ib. 145. Yeb. 34ᵇ; a. e.
עַר
- (cmp. עָר) ʿar, name of a bird of prey, perh. Lammergeyer. Targ. O. Lev. XI, 13 (ed. Amst. עד; Targ. Y. עוזא; h. text פרס); Targ. O. Deut. XIV, 12 (ed. Berl. עָר; Y. II עַרְיָא; ed. Amst. עַדְ׳).
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 7 distinct written forms H6147 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| עֵ֚ר | Noun, Proper | Genesis 38:7 | 2 |
| עֵ֣ר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:3 | 2 |
| עֵ֤ר | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:12 | 2 |
| לְ/עֵ֣ר | Noun, Proper | Genesis 38:6 | 1 |
| עֵ֛ר | Noun, Proper | Numbers 26:19 | 1 |
| עֵ֧ר | Noun, Proper | Genesis 46:12 | 1 |
| עֵֽר | Noun, Proper | Genesis 38:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6147, 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
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 10 — not the complete family. 4 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 (Er). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(watchful).
+ First-born of Judah. Er "was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him." (Genesis 38:3-7; Numbers 26:19) + Descendant of Shelah the son of Judah. (1 Chronicles 4:21) + Son of Jose and father of Elmodam. (Luke 3:28)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
watchman
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
