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פְּלִשְׁתִּי

Philistine

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Philistine’ fuller range ↓

H6430 Strong's Hebrew
Pᵉlishtîy Transliteration
/pel-ish-tee'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 290 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

פלשתי (Pᵉlishtîy) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Philistine.” 1 Samuel dominates its distribution — 125 of 244 verses. Spanning 244 verses in 18 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 10:14. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Philistine
Modern gloss
Philistine
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H6430 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 →

244
distinct verses
The word appears in 244 distinct verses.
18 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 18 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 10:14
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 10:14.
Zechariah 9:6
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Zechariah 9:6.
#169
by frequency
Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 169 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 244 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 10 · 4%
  • Historical 217 · 89%
  • Wisdom 1 · 0%
  • Prophets 16 · 7%

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 244 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 204 verses · 84%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 30 verses · 12%
  • Torah (Pentateuch) 10 verses · 4%

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: Philistines 218×, Philistine 30×, Against the philistines 8×
  • American Standard Version: Philistines 205×, Philistine 27×, Against the philistines 7×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Philistines 205×, Philistine 44×, Now the philistines 7×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Philistines 232×, Philistine 33×, Against the philistines 6×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H6430 across 288 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Philistines” 218×
  • “Philistine” 30×
  • “Against the philistines” 8×
  • “Now the philistines” 4×
  • “Philistines'” 4×
  • “All the philistines” 3×
  • “Among the philistines” 2×
  • “Belonged to the philistines” 2×

Plus 17 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 H6430 across 287 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Philistines” 205×
  • “Philistine” 27×
  • “Against the philistines” 7×
  • “Now the philistines” 7×
  • “All the philistines” 3×
  • “Among the philistines” 2×
  • “Belonged to the philistines” 2×
  • “Daughters of the philistines” 2×
  • “Him” 2×
  • “Slew the philistines” 2×
  • “Smote the philistine” 2×

Plus 26 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 H6430 across 280 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Philistines” 205×
  • “Philistine” 44×
  • “Now the philistines” 7×
  • “Against the philistines” 4×
  • “Them” 2×
  • “They” 2×
  • “Through the philistine” 2×

Plus 14 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 8 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H6430 across 285 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Philistines” 232×
  • “Philistine” 33×
  • “Against the philistines” 6×
  • “Now the philistines” 5×
  • “Among the philistines” 3×

Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


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.

  1. Philistine = "immigrants"
  2. an inhabitant of Philistia…

Word origin

Derived from פלשת (Pᵉlesheth) (H6429) — Philistia.

Part of speech: Adjective


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.

פְּלִשְׁתִּי

  • (b. h.) Philistine.—Pl. פְּלִשְׁתִּים. Sot. VIII, 1 פ׳ באו וכ׳ the Philistines came with boastful reliance on &c., v. נִצָּחוֹן. Midr. Till. to Ps. LX. Num. R. s. 14 ארץ פ׳ Philistia; a. fr.

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 72 distinct written forms H6430 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
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Amos 1:8 38
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Ezekiel 16:57 23
פְלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 10:1 22
פְלִשְׁתִּ֗ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 10:2 17
פְּלִשְׁתִּֽים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Genesis 21:32 17
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Ezekiel 25:15 16
פְלִשְׁתִּים֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 12:19 11
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:11 9
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 10:1 9
פְלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 4:2 9
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:10 8
פְלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 10:11 8
פְלִשְׁתִּֽים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 11:13 7
פְלִשְׁתִּ֜ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 10:9 5
פְלִשְׁתִּ֤ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 13:12 4
פְּלִשְׁתִּים֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 7:10 4
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 7:13 3
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 4:7 3
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּ֣ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 7:10 3
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֗ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 12:9 3
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֥ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Judges 16:9 3
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֗ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 19:8 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Samuel 5:19 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֗י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:8 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֛י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:42 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֜י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:51 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֣י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:26 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֨י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:23 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּֽי Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:40 2
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּי֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:43 2
וּ/מִ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 18:11 2
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּ֞ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 13:5 2
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּים֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 5:1 2
מִ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Judges 14:4 2
פְלִשְׁתִּ֛ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 6:17 2
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֛ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Kings 18:8 2
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֜ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 4:1 2
פְּלִשְׁתִּ֧ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 12:19 2
בַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 23:2 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 13:4 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 23:2 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֜ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Samuel 23:10 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּֽים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 14:30 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Samuel 23:9 1
בַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּים֮ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 18:27 1
ה/פלשתים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Samuel 21:12 1
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 13:20 1
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֛ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:51 1
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֤י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:26 1
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֥י Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:32 1
הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּים֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Chronicles 21:16 1
וְ/הַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּים֙ Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Chronicles 11:13 1
וּ/בַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 14:47 1
וּ/בַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּֽים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Chronicles 26:6 1
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּ֔ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Samuel 17:21 1
וּ/פְלִשְׁתִּיִּ֥ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Amos 9:7 1
וּ/פִלְשִׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Judges 15:14 1
כַּ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute Isaiah 2:6 1
לַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 Kings 15:27 1
לַ/פְּלִשְׁתִּ֖ים Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 Samuel 21:15 1

The 60 most common forms are shown; 12 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 220 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 244 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.

Reading settings

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Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

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