עָרֵל
uncircumcised
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.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
28 distinct verses where H6189 appears in the Absolute state, across 11 books. 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Exodus 1 verse
Leviticus 2 verses
- Leviticus 19:23 עֲרֵלִ֖ים adj Adjective mp "'When you come into the land, and have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden. Three years shall they be forbidden to you. It shall not be eaten.
- Leviticus 26:41 הֶֽ/עָרֵ֔ל ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective ms I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies: if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity;
Joshua 1 verse
Judges 2 verses
- Judges 14:3 הָ/עֲרֵלִ֑ים ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp Then his father and his mother said to him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of your brothers, or among all my people, that you go to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? Samson said to his father, Get her for me; for she pleases me well.
- Judges 15:18 הָ/עֲרֵלִֽים ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised.
1 Samuel 4 verses
- 1 Samuel 14:6 הָ/עֲרֵלִ֣ים ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, Come, and let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint to Yahweh to save by many or by few.
- 1 Samuel 17:26 הֶֽ/עָרֵל֙ ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective ms David spoke to the men who stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?
- 1 Samuel 17:36 הֶ/עָרֵ֤ל ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective ms Your servant struck both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.
- 1 Samuel 31:4 הָ/עֲרֵלִ֨ים ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp Then said Saul to his armor bearer, Draw your sword, and thrust me through therewith, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armor bearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took his sword, and fell on it.
2 Samuel 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 2 verses
- Jeremiah 6:10 עֲרֵלָ֣ה adj Adjective fs To whom shall I speak and testify, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they can't listen: behold, the word of Yahweh is become to them a reproach; they have no delight in it.
- Jeremiah 9:26 עֲרֵלִ֔ים עַרְלֵי adj Adjective mp adj Adjective mp cs Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners [of their hair] cut off, who dwell in the wilderness; for all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.
Ezekiel 12 verses
- Ezekiel 28:10 עֲרֵלִ֛ים adj Adjective mp You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of strangers: for I have spoken it, says the Lord Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 31:18 עֲרֵלִ֤ים adj Adjective mp To whom are you thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet shall you be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth: you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 32:19 עֲרֵלִֽים adj Adjective mp Whom do you pass in beauty? Go down, and be laid with the uncircumcised.
- Ezekiel 32:21 הָ/עֲרֵלִ֖ים ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective mp The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of Sheol with those who help him: they are gone down, they lie still, even the uncircumcised, slain by the sword.
- Ezekiel 32:24 עֲרֵלִ֣ים adj Adjective mp There is Elam and all her multitude round about her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who are gone down uncircumcised into the lower parts of the earth, who caused their terror in the land of the living, and have borne their shame with those who go down to the pit.
- Ezekiel 32:25 עֲרֵלִ֣ים adj Adjective mp They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude; her graves are round about her; all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for their terror was caused in the land of the living, and they have borne their shame with those who go down to the pit: he is put in the midst of those who are slain.
- Ezekiel 32:26 עֲרֵלִים֙ adj Adjective mp There is Meshech, Tubal, and all their multitude; their graves are round about them; all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in the land of the living.
- Ezekiel 32:27 מֵ/עֲרֵלִ֑ים prep + Adjective Adjective mp They shall not lie with the mighty who are fallen of the uncircumcised, who are gone down to Sheol with their weapons of war, and have laid their swords under their heads, and their iniquities are on their bones; for [they were] the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.
- Ezekiel 32:28 עֲרֵלִ֛ים adj Adjective mp But you shall be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised, and shall lie with those who are slain by the sword.
- Ezekiel 32:29 עֲרֵלִ֥ים adj Adjective mp There is Edom, her kings and all her princes, who in their might are laid with those who are slain by the sword: they shall lie with the uncircumcised, and with those who go down to the pit.
- Ezekiel 32:30 עֲרֵלִים֙ adj Adjective mp There are the princes of the north, all of them, and all the Sidonians, who are gone down with the slain; in the terror which they caused by their might they are put to shame; and they lie uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword, and bear their shame with those who go down to the pit.
- Ezekiel 32:32 עֲרֵלִ֜ים adj Adjective mp For I have put his terror in the land of the living; and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord Yahweh.
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 noun ערל centers on the idea of “uncircumcised.” Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 17:14. It turns up in 32 verses across 11 books, a moderately common footprint. The word gravitates to Ezekiel (44%), then 1 Samuel and Exodus. It shares a root with ערל and ערלה. Dig into 32-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6189 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 →
- 32
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 32 distinct verses.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,023
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,023 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 32 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 32 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 25 verses · 78%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 19%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 3%
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: Uncircumcised 21×, All of them uncircumcised 2×, Are uncircumcised 2×
- American Standard Version: Uncircumcised 20×, Are uncircumcised 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Uncircumcised 19×, Uncircumcised men 3×, Am unskilled 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Uncircumcised 28×, Are uncircumcised 3×, Ones 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6189 across 35 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H6189 across 35 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H6189 across 32 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6189 across 38 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- uncircumcised, having foreskin
Word origin
adj. having foreskin, i.e. uncircumcised;—ע׳ Ex 12:48 + 5 times; cstr. עֶ֫רֶל Ez 44:9(×2); עֲרַל Ex 6:12, 30; f. עֲרֵלָה Je 6:10; pl. עֲרֵלִים Lv 19:23 + 20 times; cstr. עַרְלֵי Je 9:25 + 2 times;—uncircumcised person Ex 12:48; Jos 5:7 (P), Philistines Ju 14:3; 15:18; 1 S 14:6; 17:26, 36; 31:4; 2 S 1:20; 1 Ch 10:4; of other nations Is 52:1; Je 9:25, especially as slain Ez 28:10; 31:18; 32:19 + 9 times 32; in v 27 read מֵעוֹלָם so Hi and most (v. on meaning Toy 31:18); עָרֵל זָכֶר uncircumcised male Gn 17:14 (P); ע׳ בָּשָׂר Ez 44:7, 9 uncircumcised of flesh; fig. of fruit trees Lv 19:23 (cf. [עָרַל] supr.); ע׳ שְׂפָתַיִם fig. of incapacity to speak Ex 6:12, 30; of character, ע׳ לב Je 9:25; Ez 44:7, 9, cf. לִבָבָם הֶעָרֵל Lv 26:41 (H), עֲרֵלָה אָזְנָם Je 6:10 their ear is uncircumcised (unreceptive).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from ערל (ʻârêl) (H6188) — to remain uncircumcised.
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.
עָרַל
- (denom. of עָרְלָה) to sheathe, cover. Y. Orl. III, beg. 62ᵈ (ref. to Lev. XIX, 23) אית תניי תני בעוֹרֵל את פריו one Tannai explains that it refers to that which covers the fruit (peel, shell &c.); דבר שהוא עורל את פריו ופריו עוֹרְלוֹ that which covers the fruit (peel), and that which the fruit covers (kernel); Y. Maasr. IV, end, 51ᶜ דבר שעורל את פריו.—[In b. h. עָרַל to treat as ‘Orlah, to remove.] e.g. Leviticus 19:23
עָרֵל
- v. עָרְלָה) [covered,] uncircumcised; gentile. Mekh. Bo s. 15 (ref. to Ex. XII, 43) אבל ישראל ע׳ שומע וכ׳ I might deduce from this that an uncircumcised Israelite may pertake of the Passover lamb; Pes. 96ᵃ אבל ע׳ דלבו לשמים but an uncircumcised Israelite whose heart is directed towards heaven (and who remained uncircumcised, because his older brothers had died from circumcision). Yeb. VIII, 1 הע׳ וכל וכ׳ an uncircumcised priest, and all unclean persons must not eat T’rumah. Tosef. Ḥull. I, 1 אפי׳ ע׳ even an uncircumcised Israelite; Ḥull. 5ᵃ האי ע׳ היכי וכ׳ what is meant by this ʿarel? Do you mean an Israelite whose brothers died from circumcision? Pes. 92ᵃ ע׳ נכרי an uncircumcised gentile (a proselyte that was circumcised on the eve of Passover); ע׳ ישראל an Israelite that was circumcised on the eve of Passover; a. fr.—[Y. Shebi. VII, end, 37ᶜ חוץ מן הערל, read: העֲדָל.]—Pl. עֲרֵלִים. Mekh. l. c. עבדים ע׳ (not וע׳) uncircumcised slaves. Ned. III, 11 קונם … לע׳ מותר בעַרְלֵי ישראל he who vows that he will not receive any benefits from uncircumcised persons, is permitted benefits from uncircumcised Israelites, and forbidden benefits from circumcised gentiles (the word ʿărelim being meant only for non-Jews; v. עָרְלָה); a. fr. e.g. Exodus 12:43
עָרֵל ²
- Targ. Deut. XXVIII, 43 (h. text הגר). Targ. Ex. XII, 48 (Y. עַרְלָאֵי, read: עַרְלַאי); a. fr.—Pl. עֲרֵלִין, עַרְלִין, עַרְלַיָּא, עַרְלָאִין. Targ. Josh. V, 7 (ed. Lag. עֲרילִ׳). Targ. Jer. IX, 24, sq. Targ. Esth. I, 5; a. e.
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 29 distinct written forms H6189 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 H6189, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → 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 32 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 17:14
- Exodus 6:12
- Leviticus 19:23
- Joshua 5:7
- Judges 14:3
- 1 Samuel 14:6
- 2 Samuel 1:20
- 1 Chronicles 10:4
- Isaiah 52:1
- Jeremiah 6:10
- Ezekiel 28:10
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.
