עֲרָפֶל
cloud
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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H6205 appears — 15 distinct verses across 12 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 4:11 וַ/עֲרָפֶֽל conj + n c ms You came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire to the heart of the sky, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness.
- Deuteronomy 5:22 וְ/הָֽ/עֲרָפֶ֔ל conj + ptcl def.art + n c ms These words Yahweh spoke to all your assembly on the mountain out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. He wrote them on two tables of stone, and gave them to me.
2 Samuel 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Job 2 verses
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Joel 1 verse
Zephaniah 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.
At its core, ערפל (ʻărâphel) means “cloud.” First canonically at Exodus 20:21, it enters the text early. It appears 15 verses across 12 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. It shares a root with ערף, עריף and ערף. 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 H6205 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,836
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,836 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 15 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 13%
- Job 2 verses 13%
- Psalms 2 verses 13%
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 15 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 47%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 33%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 20%
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: Thick darkness 6×, Darkness 4×, Gross darkness 2×
- American Standard Version: Thick darkness 6×, Came down and thick darkness 2×, Darkness 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Thick darkness 5×, Blackness 2×, Dark clouds 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Thick darkness 5×, Gloom 4×, Dark cloud 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6205 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H6205 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H6205 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H6205 across 15 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.
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.
- cloud, heavy or dark cloud, darkness, gross darkness, thick darkness
Word origin
n.m. cloud, heavy cloud (perhaps from above √ + ל afform; NH = BH; Syriac ܥܰܪܦܶܠܴܐ; 𝔗 עֲרָפֵילָא; Mand. ארפילא NöM 126, 128; on vocaliz. v. BaNB 160 and against him SchwallyZAW x (1890), 178 who proposes עַרְפֶּל);—ע׳ in which God dwells Ex 20:18 (Gi; van d. H. v 21), 1 K 8:12 = 2 Ch 6:1; + עָנָן Dt 4:11 (also חֹשֶׁךְ), 5:19 (22) ψ 97:2; Jb 22:13 v בַּעַד; ע׳ תַּחַת רַגְלָיו 2 S 22:10 = ψ 18:10; as swaddling-bands of sea Jb 38:9; fig. of misery Is 60:2 (‖ חֹשֶׁךְ); of י׳’s judgment Je 13:16 (‖ צַלְמָוֶת), as a past day יוֹם עָנָן וַע׳ Ez 34:12 = (of future day of י׳) Zp 1:15 (‖ יוֹם חשֶׁךְ וַאֲפֵלָה) = Jo 2:2 (‖ id.).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from ערף (ʻâraph) (H6201) — to drop.
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.
*עִרְפֵּל
- (Parel of עפל), Hithpa. הִתְעַרְפֵּל to swell (?). Midr. Till. to Ps. XVIII, 37 יִתְעַרְפְּלוּן, v. ערְטֵל.
עֲרָפֶל
- 2. cloud; spray; mist; ʿĂrafel, the lower sky. Ḥag. 12ᵇ חשך ענן וע׳ וכ׳ darkness, cloud, and mist surround him. Tanḥ. Vayera 23 פתח הקב"ה את הרקיע ואת הע׳ the Lord opened the sky and the ʿărafel. Mekh. Yithro, Baḥod., s. 2 (ref. to בעב הענן, Ex. XIX, 9) בענן עבה ואיזה זה ע׳ in a thick cloud; and what is this? This is ʿărafel; a. e. e.g. Exodus 19:9
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 10 distinct written forms H6205 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/עֲרָפֶֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 4:11 | 3 |
| בָּ/עֲרָפֶֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 8:12 | 2 |
| וַ/עֲרָפֶ֖ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 22:10 | 2 |
| וַ֝/עֲרָפֶ֗ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 38:9 | 2 |
| הָֽ/עֲרָפֶ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 20:21 | 1 |
| וְ/הָֽ/עֲרָפֶ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 5:22 | 1 |
| וַ/עֲרָפֶ֔ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Joel 2:2 | 1 |
| וַ/עֲרָפֶ֣ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 97:2 | 1 |
| לַ/עֲרָפֶֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 13:16 | 1 |
| עֲרָפֶ֣ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 22:13 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6205, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 14 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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
- Exodus 20:21
- Deuteronomy 4:11
- 2 Samuel 22:10
- 2 Chronicles 6:1
- Job 22:13
- Psalms 18:9
- Isaiah 60:2
- Jeremiah 13:16
- Ezekiel 34:12
- Joel 2:2
- Zephaniah 1:15
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.
