פָּלַס
to weigh
also: make level, balance 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
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- 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!”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (17%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6424 appears — 6 distinct verses across 3 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.
Psalms 2 verses
Proverbs 3 verses
- Proverbs 4:26 פַּ֭לֵּס Piel impv 2ms Make the path of your feet level. Let all of your ways be established.
- Proverbs 5:6 תְּפַלֵּ֑ס Piel impf 3fs She gives no thought to the way of life. Her ways are crooked, and she doesn't know it.
- Proverbs 5:21 מְפַלֵּֽס Piel ptcp.act ms For the ways of man are before the eyes of Yahweh. He examines all his paths.
Isaiah 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.
“to weigh” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb פלס (pâlaç). More than half of its appearances fall in Proverbs. It appears 6 verses across 3 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Psalms 58:2, it enters the text early. Beyond “to weigh” it also covers “make level” and “balance” — see its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6424 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 83%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 17%
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: Dost weigh 1×, He made 1×, He pondereth 1×
- American Standard Version: Dost direct 1×, He made 1×, He maketh level 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Consider 1×, Examines 1×, He cleared 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He made level 1×, He observes 1×, Make level 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6424 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6424 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6424 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6424 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
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 2 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.
- 1. weigh out חֲמַס יְדֵיכֶם תּפ׳ ψ 58:3 (fig.; but read perhaps חָמָס יְדֵיכֶם תְּפַלֵּסְנָה violence do your hands weigh out, so 𝔊 𝔖 𝔗 Bae Kau We). e.g. Psalms 58:3
- 2. make level, smooth (cf. Gerber 32). c. acc. of path (fig.), מַעְגָּל Pr 4:26; 5:21; Is 26:7, נָתִיב ψ 78:50, אֹרַח Pr 5:6. e.g. Proverbs 4:26
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.Pi.denom. weigh, make level (Ph. פלס Pi. make level(?) in n.pr.);—Impf. 3 ms. יְפַלֵּס ψ 78:50; 2 mpl. תְּפַלֵּס֑וּן ψ 58:3 (v. infr.), etc.; Imv. ms. פַּלֵּס Pr 4:26; Pt. מְפַלֵּס 5:11;—
— 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.
פְּלַס
- (cmp. פָּלַשׁ I) to split, pick to pieces. B. Kam. 19ᵇ ההוא חמרא … ופַלְסֵיה לסלא an ass ate (a neighbor’s) bread and picked the basket to pieces. Ib. אכיל והדר פָּלֵיס he eats first and then picks to pieces.
- same. Ib. אורחיה נמי לפַלּוּסֵי סלא it is also his habit to demolish a basket.
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 6 distinct written forms H6424 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| יְפַלֵּ֥ס | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 78:50 | 1 |
| מְפַלֵּֽס | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 5:21 | 1 |
| פַּ֭לֵּס | Verb, Piel, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 4:26 | 1 |
| תְּפַלֵּ֑ס | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 5:6 | 1 |
| תְּפַלֵּֽס | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 26:7 | 1 |
| תְּפַלֵּֽסֽוּ/ן | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 58:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6424, 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 → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
