פְּנוּאֵל
Penuel
BDB lists 4 entries for ‘Penuel’ 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 H6439 appears — 8 distinct verses across 4 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.
Genesis 2 verses
Judges 3 verses
- Judges 8:8 פְּנוּאֵ֔ל פְנוּאֵ֔ל n Proper n Proper He went up there to Penuel, and spoke to them in like manner; and the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Succoth had answered.
- Judges 8:9 פְנוּאֵ֖ל n Proper He spoke also to the men of Penuel, saying, When I come again in peace, I will break down this tower.
- Judges 8:17 פְּנוּאֵ֖ל n Proper He broke down the tower of Penuel, and killed the men of the city.
1 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 2 verses
- 1 Chronicles 4:4 וּ/פְנוּאֵל֙ conj + n Proper and Penuel the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These are the sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephrathah, the father of Bethlehem.
- 1 Chronicles 8:25 ו/פניאל וּ/פְנוּאֵ֖ל conj + n Proper conj + n Proper and Iphdeiah, and Penuel, the sons of Shashak,
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.
“Penuel” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name פנואל (Pᵉnûwʼêl). First canonically at Genesis 32:30, it enters the text early. With 8 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Judges, which alone accounts for 38% of its uses. See 8-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6439 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Judges 3 verses 38%
- Genesis 2 verses 25%
- 1 Chronicles 2 verses 25%
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 8 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 50%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 25%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 25%
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: Penuel 7×
- American Standard Version: Penuel 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Penuel 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Penuel 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6439 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H6439 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H6439 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H6439 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 4 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. loc. E. of Jordan, near Jabboḳ Gn 32:32 Ju 8:8(×2), 9, 17 1 K 12:25 = פְּנִיאֵל Gn 32:31: site unknown; v. especially PaineBib. Sac. 1878, 481 ff. e.g. Genesis 32:32
- 2. m.
- a. in Judah 1 Ch 4:4. e.g. 1 Chronicles 4:4
- b. in Benjamin 1 Ch 8:25 Qr (Kt פניאל). e.g. 1 Chronicles 8:25
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
n.pr. (face of God, cf. GFM Ju 8:8; late Assyrian Panîli HilprUniv. Pa. Exp. ix. 68);—Φανουηλ, but in Gn εἶδος (τοῦ) Θεοῦ:
— 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.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms H6439 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ו/פניאל | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 8:25 | 1 |
| וּ/פְנוּאֵ֖ל | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 8:25 | 1 |
| וּ/פְנוּאֵל֙ | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:4 | 1 |
| פְנוּאֵ֔ל | Noun, Proper | Judges 8:8 | 1 |
| פְנוּאֵ֖ל | Noun, Proper | Judges 8:9 | 1 |
| פְּנִיאֵ֑ל | Noun, Proper | Genesis 32:30 | 1 |
| פְּנוּאֵ֑ל | Noun, Proper | Genesis 32:31 | 1 |
| פְּנוּאֵ֔ל | Noun, Proper | Judges 8:8 | 1 |
| פְּנוּאֵ֖ל | Noun, Proper | Judges 8:17 | 1 |
| פְּנוּאֵֽל | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 12:25 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6439, 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 6 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Penuel). 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
Face of God, a place not far from Succoth, on the east of the Jordan and north of the river Jabbok. It is also called "Peniel." Here Jacob wrestled (Gen. 32:24-32) "with a man" ("the angel", Hos. 12:4. Jacob says of him, "I have seen God face to face") "till the break of day."
A town was afterwards built there (Judg. 8:8; 1 Kings 12:25). The men of this place refused to succour Gideon and his little army when they were in pursuit of the Midianites (Judg. 8:1-21). On his return, Gideon slew the men of this city and razed its lofty watch-tower to the ground.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
[Peniel]
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
same as Peniel
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
