פּוּחַ
to breathe
‘to breathe’ is one of 2 main senses 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
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘cause garden’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
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.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
2 verses where H6315 appears in the Qal stem in the Book of Song of Solomon. 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.
Song of Solomon
- Song of Solomon 2:17 שֶׁ/יָּפ֨וּחַ֙ ptcl rel + Qal impf 3ms Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, Turn, my beloved, And be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether.
- Song of Solomon 4:6 שֶׁ/יָּפ֨וּחַ֙ ptcl rel + Qal impf 3ms Until the day is cool, and the shadows flee away, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, To the hill of frankincense.
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.
פוח (pûwach) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to breathe.” Proverbs dominates its distribution — 7 of 14 verses. Spanning 14 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Psalms 10:5. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Hiphil, and more). For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6315 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Proverbs 7 verses 50%
- Song of Solomon 3 verses 21%
- Psalms 2 verses 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 14 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 86%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 14%
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: He that speaketh 3×, Break 2×
- American Standard Version: He that uttereth 4×, Be cool 2×, Uttereth 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Breaks 2×, One who utters 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Breathes 2×, Breathes out 2×, But 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6315 across 15 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 H6315 across 15 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H6315 across 14 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6315 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
8 senses and sub-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 8 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
- Impf. 3 ms. יָפוּחַ הַיּוֹם Ct 2:17; 4:6 until the day breathes, i.e. grows cool. e.g. Song of Solomon 2:17
Hiphil
- Impf. 3 ms. יָפִיחַ ψ 10:5 +; יָפִחַ Pr 14:25; וְיָפֵחַ Hb 2:3, etc.; Imv. fs. הָפִיחִי Ct 4:16;— e.g. Psalms 10:5
- 1. cause garden (acc.) to exhale (sc. odours) Ct 4:16. e.g. Song of Solomon 4:16
- 2.
- a. puff, snort, against, ב pers., ψ 10:5. e.g. Psalms 10:5
- b. עַל pers., Ez 21:36 with the fire of my wrath will I blow against thee. e.g. Ezekiel 21:36
- c. excite, inflame city Pr 29:8. e.g. Proverbs 29:8
- d. c. לוֹ ψ 12:6 puff, = pant for it (so most; Thes Hi al. against whom men puff; Bae אֹפִיעַ לוֹ I will shine forth to him); לַקֵּץ Hb 2:3 the vision panteth (hasteth) towards the end (so most). e.g. Psalms 12:6
- 3. breathe out, utter, כְּזָבִים Pr 6:19; 14:5, 25; 19:5, 9, אֱמוּנָה 12:17. e.g. Proverbs 6:19
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. breathe, blow (NH פּוּחַ blow out; Arabic (فوخ), فَاخَ = Heb., so Aramaic פּוּחַ, ܦܳܚ );—
— 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.
פּוּחַ
- (b. h.) to blow, blow up; פ׳ נפש to blow the soul out, to dishearten. Num. R. s. 20 מה אני הולך אצלו לָפוּחַ את נפשו why should I go to him (Balak) to dishearten him?; Tanḥ. Balak 13.—[Y. Ter. VIII, 46ᵃ top שתפוח הכרית, read: שתפרח, v. כְּרִית.]
- 1. same, esp. same, esp. to break wind. Sabb. 49ᵃ; 130ᵃ שלא יָפִיחַ בהן that he will not desecrate the T’fillin by passing winds. Ab. Zar. 17ᵃ חֵפִיחָה she broke &c.; a. e.
- 2. to stir up. Midr. Till. to Ps. III אל תָּפִיחוּ את הישן do not stir up that which slumbers (do not disturb the accepted order of the psalms); Yalk. ib. 624 (not תפיחי).
- (denom. of פִּיחַ) [to use powdered colors,] to paint. B. Bath. 60ᵇ ואין מְפַיְּיחִין, v. כִּיר; Tosef. ib. II, 17.—Part. pass. מְפוּיָּיח; f. מְפוּיֶּיחֶת. Ib. Tosef. Ter. VII, 16 מפויה ed. Zuck. (Var. מפויית; מצויר) read מְפוּיָּח or מְפוּיָּיח.
פּוּחַ ²
- 1. to blow. Y. Snh. I, 18ᶜ bot. פַּח (ed. Krot. פה, corr. acc.); Y. R. Hash. I, 58ᵇ top פּוֹחַ blow, breathe!, v. יַפַּח.
- 2. to evaporate, (with נפשא) to despair. Targ. Y. Num. XXI, 30 עד דִּיפַח נפשיהּון until they are in despair (h. text עד נפח).
- 3. to cool off, be sobered. Targ. Esth. II, 1 (ed. Lag. פג).
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 11 distinct written forms H6315 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 H6315, 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
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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). 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 14 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.
