פּוֹטִיפַר
Potiphar
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Potiphar’ 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 H6318 appears — 2 distinct verses across 1 book. 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 2 verses
- Genesis 37:36 לְ/פֽוֹטִיפַר֙ prep + n Proper The Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard.
- Genesis 39:1 פּוֹטִיפַר֩ n Proper Joseph was brought down to Egypt. Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the hand of the Ishmaelites that had brought him down there.
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 name פוטיפר centers on the idea of “Potiphar.” With only 2 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. The word gravitates to Genesis (100%). Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 37:36. For the data behind this summary, explore 2-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6318 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 2 verses 100%
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 2 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 100%
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: Potiphar 2×
- American Standard Version: Potiphar 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Named potiphar 1×, Potiphar 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Potiphar 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6318 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6318 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6318 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6318 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses 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.
- Potiphar = "belonging to the sun"
- an officer of Pharaoh, chief of the executioners, and the master to whom Joseph was sold as a slave
Word origin
n.pr.m. Joseph’s master (abbrev. from foll.);—Gn 37:36 (E), 39:1 (RJ), Πετεφρης, etc.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: of Egyptian derivation
Forms in the corpus
The 2 distinct written forms H6318 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לְ/פֽוֹטִיפַר֙ | Noun, Proper | Genesis 37:36 | 1 |
| פּוֹטִיפַר֩ | Noun, Proper | Genesis 39:1 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Potiphar). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Dedicated to Ra; i.e., to the sun-god, the Egyptian to whom the Ishmaelites sold Joseph (Gen. 39:1). He was "captain of the guard", i.e., chief, probably, of the state police, who, while they formed part of the Egyptian army, were also largely employed in civil duties (37:36; marg., "chief of the executioners"). Joseph, though a foreigner, gradually gained his confidence, and became overseer over all his possessions. Believing the false accusation which his profligate wife brought against Joseph, Potiphar cast him into prison, where he remained for some years. (See JOSEPH.)
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
an Egyptian name, also written Potipherah, signifies belonging to the sun . Potiphar. with whom the history of Joseph is connected is described as an officer of Pharaoh chief of the executioners, an Egyptian." (Genesis 39:1) comp. Genesis37:36 (B.C. 1728.) He appears to have been a wealthy man. (Genesis 39:4-6) The view we have of Potiphar's household is exactly in accordance with the representations on the monuments. When Joseph was accused, his master contented himself with casting him into prison. (Genesis 39:19,20) After this we hear no more of Potiphar. [Joseph]
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
bull of Africa; a fat bull
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
