פֶּן־
lest
also: not, beware lest 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
- Conjunction
- A joining word (e.g. “and,” “but”) linking words or clauses.
Every verse where H6435 appears in the Book of Proverbs — 17 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.
Proverbs
- Proverbs 5:6 פֶּן conj She gives no thought to the way of life. Her ways are crooked, and she doesn't know it.
- Proverbs 5:9 פֶּן conj Lest you give your honor to others, And your years to the cruel one;
- Proverbs 5:10 פֶּֽן conj Lest strangers feast on your wealth, And your labors enrich another man's house.
- Proverbs 9:8 פֶּן conj Don't reprove a scoffer, lest he hate you. Reprove a wise man, and he will love you.
- Proverbs 20:13 פֶּן conj Don't love sleep, lest you come to poverty; Open your eyes, and you shall be satisfied with bread.
- Proverbs 22:25 פֶּן conj Lest you learn his ways, And ensnare your soul.
- Proverbs 24:18 פֶּן conj Lest Yahweh see it, and it displease him, And he turn away his wrath from him.
- Proverbs 25:8 פֶּ֣ן conj Don't be hasty in bringing charges to court. What will you do in the end when your neighbor shames you?
- Proverbs 25:10 פֶּֽן conj Lest one who hears it put you to shame, And your bad reputation never depart.
- Proverbs 25:16 פֶּן conj Have you found honey? Eat as much as is sufficient for you, Lest you eat too much, and vomit it.
- Proverbs 25:17 פֶּן conj Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, Lest he be weary of you, and hate you.
- Proverbs 26:4 פֶּֽן conj Don't answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.
- Proverbs 26:5 פֶּן conj Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.
- Proverbs 30:6 פֶּן conj Don't you add to his words, Lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar.
- Proverbs 30:9 פֶּ֥ן וּ/פֶֽן conj conj + conj Lest I be full, deny you, and say, 'Who is Yahweh?' Or lest I be poor, and steal, And so dishonor the name of my God.
- Proverbs 30:10 פֶּֽן conj "Don't slander a servant to his master, Lest he curse you, and you be held guilty.
- Proverbs 31:5 פֶּן conj Lest they drink, and forget the law, And pervert the justice due to anyone who is afflicted.
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.
פן (pên) is a Hebrew word most often rendered “lest.” Debuting at Genesis 3:3, it then recurs through the corpus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 125 verses — common. It also covers “not” and “beware lest”, alongside “lest” — see its full sense range. Related forms include פנה, פנים and יפנה. 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 H6435 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 →
- 125
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 125 distinct verses.
- 20 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 20 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #339
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 339 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 125 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 24 verses 19%
- Genesis 17 verses 14%
- Proverbs 17 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 125 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 57 verses · 46%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 38 verses · 30%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 30 verses · 24%
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: Lest 1×, Lest peradventure 1×, Not 1×
- American Standard Version: Lest 1×, Lest peradventure 1×, Not 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Or 38×, Lest 21×, Otherwise 19×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Lest 110×, That 11×, Not 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6435 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6435 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6435 across 124 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 22 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 H6435 across 142 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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
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. with impf.
- 2. with Pf., the result feared being conceived as having possibly already taken place
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
פֶּן־ 133 (alw. with Makkeph) conj. (adverting or deprecating), lest
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from פנה (pânâh) (H6437) — to turn.
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.
פן
- , Targ. Jon. I, 8 some ed. ומפן, read ומנן, v. מְנָן
פֶּן
- [eventually,] lest. Zeb. 106ᵃ כל מקום שנאמר השמר פן ואל וכ׳ wherever the Scripture has ‘be guarded, lest’, or al, it introduces a prohibitory law (v. עָשָׂה); Sot. 5ᵃ, a. fr. Sifré Deut. 70, quot. in Yalk. ib. 882 השמר בלא תעשה פן בלא תעשה ‘be guarded’ means a prohibitory law, and so does ‘lest’.
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 9 distinct written forms H6435 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| פֶּן | Conjunction | Amos 5:6 | 97 |
| פֶּֽן | Conjunction | Deuteronomy 4:23 | 19 |
| פֶּ֚ן | Conjunction | Deuteronomy 7:25 | 6 |
| וּ/פֶן | Conjunction | Deuteronomy 4:9 | 4 |
| פֶּ֥ן | Conjunction | Deuteronomy 11:16 | 2 |
| פֶּ֨ן | Conjunction | Deuteronomy 4:16 | 2 |
| וּ/פֶֽן | Conjunction | Proverbs 30:9 | 1 |
| פֶּ֖ן | Conjunction | Genesis 38:23 | 1 |
| פֶּ֣ן | Conjunction | Proverbs 25:8 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6435, 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.
Derives from
Shares the same root
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 5 — not the complete family. 2 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 121 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 125 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 3:3
- Exodus 1:10
- Leviticus 10:7
- Numbers 16:26
- Deuteronomy 4:9
- Joshua 2:16
- Judges 7:2
- Ruth 4:6
- 1 Samuel 4:9
- 2 Samuel 1:20
- 2 Kings 2:16
- 1 Chronicles 10:4
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.
