פָּלַל
to pray
‘to pray’ is one of 2 main senses 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself). Here: ‘intercede’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- 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.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H6419 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 10 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.
1 Kings
- 1 Kings 8:28 מִתְפַּלֵּ֥ל Hithpael ptcp.act ms Yet have respect for the prayer of your servant, and for his supplication, Yahweh my God, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which your servant prays before you this day;
- 1 Kings 8:29 יִתְפַּלֵּ֣ל Hithpael impf 3ms that your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which you have said, My name shall be there; to listen to the prayer which your servant shall pray toward this place.
- 1 Kings 8:30 יִֽתְפַּֽלְל֖וּ Hithpael impf 3mp Listen you to the supplication of your servant, and of your people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place: yes, hear in heaven, your dwelling-place; and when you hear, forgive.
- 1 Kings 8:33 וְ/הִֽתְפַּֽלְל֧וּ conj + Hithpael wpf 3cp When your people Israel are struck down before the enemy, because they have sinned against you; if they turn again to you, and confess your name, and pray and make supplication to you in this house:
- 1 Kings 8:35 וְ/הִֽתְפַּֽלְל֞וּ conj + Hithpael wpf 3cp When the sky is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against you; if they pray toward this place, and confess your name, and turn from their sin, when you do afflict them:
- 1 Kings 8:42 וְ/הִתְפַּלֵּ֖ל conj + Hithpael wpf 3ms (for they shall hear of your great name, and of your mighty hand, and of your outstretched arm); when he shall come and pray toward this house;
- 1 Kings 8:44 וְ/הִתְפַּֽלְל֣וּ conj + Hithpael wpf 3cp If your people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatever way you shall send them, and they pray to Yahweh toward the city which you have chosen, and toward the house which I have built for your name;
- 1 Kings 8:48 וְ/הִֽתְפַּֽלְל֣וּ conj + Hithpael wpf 3cp if they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for your name:
- 1 Kings 8:54 לְ/הִתְפַּלֵּל֙ prep + Hithpael inf.cs It was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication to Yahweh, he arose from before the altar of Yahweh, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread forth toward heaven.
- 1 Kings 13:6 וְ/הִתְפַּלֵּ֣ל conj + Hithpael impv 2ms The king answered the man of God, Entreat now the favor of Yahweh your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again. The man of God entreated Yahweh, and the king's hand was restored him again, and became as it was before.
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 verb פלל centers on the idea of “to pray.” First canonically at Genesis 20:7, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 82 verses — moderately common. The verb spans 2 stems, from Piel to Hithpael. Related forms include פליל, תפלה and אפלל. Dig into 82-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6419 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 →
- 82
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 82 distinct verses.
- 18 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 18 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #483
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 483 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 82 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 14 verses 17%
- 1 Samuel 10 verses 12%
- 1 Kings 10 verses 12%
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 82 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 47 verses · 57%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 28 verses · 34%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 9%
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: Prayed 19×, Pray 18×, I prayed 6×
- American Standard Version: Pray 16×, Prayed 14×, He prayed 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pray 19×, Prayed 14×, They pray 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Pray 15×, Prayed 13×, And 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6419 across 84 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 27 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 H6419 across 84 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 24 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 H6419 across 84 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 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 H6419 across 95 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 20 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 5 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.
Piel
- . mediate, judge
Hithpael
- 1. specif. intercede
- 2. gen. pray
- 3. pray
- 4. of poetical, liturgical prayer
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
[ פָּלַל ] 84 vb. prob. intervene, interpose
— 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.
פָּלַל
- (b. h.) to separate, divide.
- to arbitrate, intercede; trnsf. to pray. Sabb. 55ᵇ (ref. to פ̇ח̇ז̇, Gen. XLIX, 4) פִּ֗ילַּלְתָּה ח̇לתה ז̇רחה וכ׳ thou didst plead, thou didst pray, thy prayer rose &c. e.g. Genesis 49:4
- (denom. of תְּפִלָּה) to pray. Ber. V, 1 להִתְפַּלֵּל, v. כּוֹבֶד. Ib. היו שוהים … ומִתְפַּלְּלִים used to tarry a while (in meditation) and then say the prayers. Ib. IV, 3 יִתְפַּלֵּל שמונה עשרה should pray the eighteen benedictions. Ib. 4 מִתְפַּלֵּל תפלה קצרה says a short prayer. Y. ib. 8ᵇ top ספק נתפ׳ ספק לא נ׳ if he is in doubt whether he has or has not said his prayers; a. v. fr.
פְּלַל
- , to argue, debate (v. פלפל). Y. Shebi. VIII, 38ᵇ top מאן גדם לך דלא פַלְתָּה עם חביריך what brought it on thee (that thou couldst not solve that problem)? That thou didst not hold debates with thy fellow students; Y. Ned. XI, 42ᶜ bot. ילפתה (corr. acc.).
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 66 distinct written forms H6419 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 6 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6419, 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 → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 75 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 82 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 20:7
- Numbers 11:2
- Deuteronomy 9:20
- 1 Samuel 1:10
- 2 Samuel 7:27
- 1 Kings 8:28
- 2 Kings 4:33
- 1 Chronicles 17:25
- 2 Chronicles 6:19
- Ezra 10:1
- Job 42:8
- Psalms 5:2
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.
