פָּעַם
to impel
‘to impel’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘the spirit of’
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (40%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6470 appears — 5 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 1 verse
Judges 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Daniel 2 verses
- Daniel 2:1 וַ/תִּתְפָּ֣עֶם conj + Hithpael wimpf 3fs In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams; and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep went from him.
- Daniel 2:3 וַ/תִּפָּ֣עֶם conj + Niphal wimpf 3fs The king said to them, I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.
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.
פעם — transliterated pâʻam — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to impel.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 5 verses. More than a third of its appearances fall in Daniel. It first appears in Genesis 41:8. Read the stem: it spans 3 stems, including Qal and Niphal. See the sense tree, 5-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6470 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 →
- 5
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 5 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 60%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 20%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 20%
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: Was troubled 3×
- American Standard Version: Was troubled 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: I am too troubled 1×, Is anxious 1×, Stir him 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Agitate him 1×, And 1×, I was troubled 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6470 across 5 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 H6470 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H6470 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6470 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 3 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.
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
[ פָּעַם ] vb. thrust, impel (prob. orig. strike, hit )
— 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.
פָּעַם
- (b. h.) to beat, knock.
- to beat, perturb. Gen. R. s. 18 (play on הפעם, Gen. II, 23) זו היא שהיתה מְפַעַמְתֵּנִי וכ׳ this is she who perturbed me the whole night; Yalk. ib. 24 (corr. acc.). e.g. Genesis 2:23
- to be perturbed, troubled. Gen. R. s. 89; Tanḥ. Miḳḳ. 2 (distinction between וַתִּפָּעֶם (Gen. XLI, 8) and וַתִּתְפָּעֶם (Dan. II, 1); Yalk. Dan. 1060; Yalk. Gen. 147. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXVII מִתְפָּעֶמֶת אני והולכת I am constantly perturbed (sleepless); a. e. e.g. Genesis 41:8
פַּעַם
- c. (b. h.; preced.)
- 1. beat, step. — Pl. פַּעֲמוֹת, פְּעָמִים. Y. Sabb. XVI, 15ᶜ כיון שהרגיש בקול פַּעֲמוֹתָיו וכ׳ when he perceived the sound of R. Yishmael’s foosteps. Cant. R. to VII, 2 אינו מדבר אלא בפַעֲמֵי רגלים the verse speaks of the steps of the festive pilgrimages; ib. ומה היה יפיין לפְעָמַיִךְ וכ׳ and what was the beauty of ‘thy footsteps?’ That they locked the door for all troubles (no troubles arose in the homes of the pilgrims during their absence). Lam. R. introd. (R. Naḥm.) ולא היו עולין לפעמי רגלים they have not gone up on festive pilgrimages; Yalk. Is. 302; a. e.
- 2. time. Sabb. 12ᵇ פ׳ אחת קרא וכ׳ once it happened that he read &c. Pes. X, 4 (116ᵃ) שבכל הלילות אין אנו מטבילין אלא פ׳ אחת וכ׳ Ms. M. (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) all other nights we dip (eatables) only once, and this night twice. Gen. R. s. 18 וחזר ובראה לו פ׳ שניה and he created her a second time; הדא היא דכתיב זאת הפ׳ זאת היא של אותו הפ׳ therefore it is written (Gen. II, 23) ‘this the time’, this is (the creation) of this time; a. v. fr.—Pl. פְּעָמִים. Pes. l. c. Yoma I, 6 פ׳ הרבה וכ׳ many a time I read to him from Daniel; a. fr.—פ׳ ש־ at times, sometimes. Men. 99ᵃ sq., v. בִּיטּוּל. Lev. R. s. 35, end פ׳ שעושה בזכות וכ׳ sometimes he makes (rain) for the sake of one man &c.; Y. Taan. III, 66ᶜ top. Cant. R. l. c. פעמים הללו פ׳ מכוסין פ׳ מגולין those steps (of the travellers) are at times covered, at times uncovered; a. fr.—Du. פַּעֲמַיִם twice. Sot. 42ᵃ פ׳ מדבר עמם וכ׳ he addresses them twice, once &c. Cant. R. to II, 16 ואני … בכל יום פ׳ וכ׳ and I declare the unity of his name twice every day (saying), Hear, O Israel, &c.; a. fr. e.g. Genesis 2:23
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 4 distinct written forms H6470 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/תִּפָּ֣עֶם | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Daniel 2:3 | 2 |
| וַ/תִּתְפָּ֣עֶם | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Daniel 2:1 | 1 |
| לְ/פַעֲמ֖/וֹ | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Judges 13:25 | 1 |
| נִ֝פְעַ֗מְתִּי | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Psalms 77:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6470, 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 5 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.
