עָשַׁר
to become rich
‘to become rich’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘make rich’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
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).
Every verse where H6238 appears in the Book of Proverbs — 6 distinct verses. 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.
Proverbs
- Proverbs 10:4 תַּעֲשִֽׁיר Hiphil impf 3fs He becomes poor who works with a lazy hand, But the hand of the diligent brings wealth.
- Proverbs 10:22 תַעֲשִׁ֑יר Hiphil impf 3fs Yahweh's blessing brings wealth, And he adds no trouble to it.
- Proverbs 13:7 מִ֭תְעַשֵּׁר Hithpael ptcp.act ms There are some who pretend to be rich, yet have nothing. There are some who pretend to be poor, yet have great wealth.
- Proverbs 21:17 יַעֲשִֽׁיר Hiphil impf 3ms He who loves pleasure shall be a poor man: He who loves wine and oil shall not be rich.
- Proverbs 23:4 לְֽ/הַעֲשִׁ֑יר prep + Hiphil inf.cs Don't weary yourself to be rich. In your wisdom, show restraint.
- Proverbs 28:20 לְ֝/הַעֲשִׁ֗יר prep + Hiphil inf.cs A faithful man is rich with blessings; But one who is eager to be rich will not go unpunished.
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.
עשר — transliterated ʻâshar — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to become rich.” Debuting at Genesis 14:23, it then recurs through the corpus. With 17 verses in 10 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Proverbs (35% of all occurrences). As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Hiphil, and more). 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 H6238 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 59%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 35%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 6%
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: Maketh rich 3×, Be rich 2×
- American Standard Version: Maketh rich 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Be rich 2×, Rich 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Become rich 3×, I have become rich 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6238 across 18 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6238 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 15 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 H6238 across 17 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6238 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 16 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. This entry also uses Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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
- I have become rich
Hiphil
- 1. make rich
- 2. gain riches
Hithpael
- . one enriching himself.
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
[ עָשַׁר ] vb. be or become rich
— 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.
עוֹשֶׁר
- plenty, wealth, riches. Ab. IV, 9, v. עִוֹנִי. B. Bath. 9ᵇ בעלי ע׳ wealthy men; a. e.—Gen. R. s. 63 (play on ויעתר, Gen. XXV, 21; cmp. עוּתְרָא) שפך תפלות בע׳ he poured out prayers plentifully; Yalk. ib. 110 כעתר (corr. acc., or בְּעֶתֶר, a Hebr. adapt. of עוֹתַר). e.g. Genesis 25:21
עָשַׁר
- (cmp. עֲשַׁן) to be strong, substantial, wealthy.
- 1. (denom. of (denom. of עָשִׁיר) to become wealthy. B. Bath. 25ᵇ ושיַעֲשִׁיר and he who desires to become rich. Ber. 33ᵃ הֶעֱשִׁירוּ קבעוה וכ׳ when they became wealthy, they made it a custom to recite the Habdalah over a cup. Meïl. 17ᵃ, v. עָנָה II, Hif. Ned. 38ᵃ לא ה׳ משה וכ׳ Moses became rich from the chips of the tablets; a. fr.
- 2. to make rich. Keth. 48ᵃ לאו כל הימנו שיעשיר וכ׳ he is not permitted to enrich his children and throw himself on the charities. Ḥull. 84ᵇ (expl. עשתרת, Deut. VII, 13) שמַעֲשִׁירוֹת את בעליהן Ar. (ed. שמְעַשְּׁרוֹת, Pi.) for they make their owners rich; Yalk. Deut. 848 שמעשרות. Cant. R. to VII, 11 (ref. to תעשרנה, Ps. LXV, 10) אם זכיתם תַּעֲשִׁיֶרנָּה ואם לאו תְּעַשְּׂרֶנָּה וכ׳ if you deserve well (it reads:) ‘thou makest her rich’, if not, ‘thou reducest her to one-tenth’, that she yield you only one-tenth; a. e. e.g. Deuteronomy 7:13
- same; v. supra. B. Bath. l. c., v. infra.
- 1. to become rich. Sabb. 119ᵃ; Taan. 9ᵃ (play on עשר תעשר, Deut. XIV, 22) עַשֵּׂר בשביל שתִּתְעַשֵּׂר give tithes in order that thou become rich. B. Bath. l. c. מתוך שמתחכם מִתְעַשֵּׁר for when he grows wise, he will also grow rich; (Ms. M. חכמתו מְעַשַּׁרְתּוֹ his wisdom makes him rich). Pes. 50ᵇ עשרים … שלא יִתְעַשְּׁרוּ שאילמלי מִתְעַשְּׁרִין וכ׳ the men of the Great Assembly held twenty-four fasts to pray that the copyists of sacred books &c. might not become rich, for if they grew rich, they would not write; a. fr.—[2) (b. h.) to pretend to be rich, to pass for a rich man. Men. 85ᵇ. Midr. Till. to Ps. XXIV.] e.g. Deuteronomy 14:22
עֲשַׁר
- ch. same (mostly עֲתַר).
- to become rich. Gitt. 30ᵇ, v. אֲשַׁר.
עשֶׁר
- , v. עוֹשֶׁר
עֶשֶׂר
- (b. h.) ten. Ab. V, 1, v. מַאֲמָר. Ex. R. s. 15, a. fr. עשר מכות (not עשרה) the ten Egyptian plagues. Ib. ע׳ אנשים ten men; a. v. fr.—In compounds עָשָׂר, עֶשְׂרֵה, as אַחַד ע׳ eleven, שְׁנֵים ע׳ twelve &c. R. Hash. I, 1 בחמשה ע׳ בו on the fifteenth day of it (the month of Shebat). Pes. I, 1 אור לארבעה ע׳, v. אוֹר II; a. v. fr.—Pl. עֶשְׂרִים twenty. B. Bath. 107ᵃ ואחד אומר בע׳ and one of the experts says, it is worth twenty (Selaim). Ab. V, 21 בן ע׳ לרריף at the age of twenty years it is time to hunt (for a living); a. v. fr.
עֲשַׂר I
- (also עֲסַר; עַסְרָא) ch. same. Targ. Gen. XLV, 23 (Y. also עֶשֶׂר; O. ed. Berl. עש׳, oth. ed. עס׳); a. fr.—חַד עֲשַׂר, חַד עֲסַר (contr. חַדְסַר) eleven; תרתי סרי twelve &c.—Pl. עַשְׂרִין, עַסְרִין, עֶ׳. Targ. Gen. XXXI, 38. Targ. Num. X, 11 בע׳ on the twentieth; a. fr.—B. Bath. 106ᵇ הויא ע׳ גריוי it contains twenty g’rivas (v. גְּרִיוָא); a. fr.
עָשַׂר
- , Pi. עִשֵּׂר (b. h.;
- 1. to give one-tenth, separate tithes. Sabb. 119ᵃ עַשִּׁר וכ׳, v. עָשַׁר. Maasr. IV, 2 ושכחו לעַשְּׂרָן but had forgotten to pay the tithe of them. Sabb. II, 7 עִשַּׂרְתֶּם have you set aside tithes (of what you intend to use for the Sabbath)? Ib. ספק … אין מְעַשְּׂרִין את הודאי if it is doubtful whether or not night has set in, you must not separate the tithes of what is sure to be subject to tithes (v. דְּמַאי); a. v. fr.—Part. pass. מְעוּשָּׂר; f. מְעוּשֶּׂרֶת; pl. מְעוּשָּׂרִים, מְעוּשָּׂרִין; מְעוּשָּׂרוֹת. Bekh. IX, 7 (קפץ אחד) מן המע׳ לתוכן if one of those (lambs) which have been set aside as tithe, leaped among the flock. Ib. הרי אלו מע׳ they (the flock) are considered as tithed; a. fr.
- 2. to reduce to one-tenth. Cant. R. to VII, 11, v. עָשַׁר.
- , Nithpa. נִתְעַשֵּׂר to be tithed. Maasr. l. c. עד שיֵעָשְׂרוּ (Ms. M. שיִתְעַשְּׂרוּ) until they are tithed. Ib. 5 מִתְעַשֶּׂרֶת זרע וכ׳ must be tithed as seed, as vegetables (if the leaves are used) &c. Bekh. IX, 1 ואינן מִתְעַשְּׂרִים מזה על זה and they (large cattle and small cattle) cannot be tithed one for the other. Ib. 53ᵇ אין דין שיִתְעַשְּׂרוּ זה מזה should we not conclude that they may be tithed one for the other?; a. fr.
עֲשַׂר II
- Pa. עַשֵּׂר, עַסֵּר same, to tithe. Targ. Deut. XIV, 22. Ib. XXVI, 12 (Y. II למַעַשְׂרָא Af.).—Yeb. 93ᵃ ע׳ מפירי דביתיה עילויהו he set aside as tithes from the produces in his house on behalf of those (that were to come in). Ib. לעַשּׂוּרֵי ומיכל as regards tithing and eating; 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 17 distinct written forms H6238 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 H6238, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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 14:23
- 1 Samuel 2:7
- Job 15:29
- Psalms 49:16
- Proverbs 10:4
- Jeremiah 5:27
- Ezekiel 27:33
- Daniel 11:2
- Hosea 12:8
- Zechariah 11:5
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.
