אָפִיק
channel
‘channel’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 11 times (58%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 7 times (37%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (5%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 19 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H650 appears — 19 distinct verses across 7 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.
2 Samuel 1 verse
Job 4 verses
- Job 6:15 כַּ/אֲפִ֖יק prep + n c ms cs My brothers have dealt deceitfully as a brook, As the channel of brooks that pass away;
- Job 12:21 אֲפִיקִ֣ים n c mp He pours contempt on princes, And loosens the belt of the strong.
- Job 40:18 אֲפִיקֵ֣י n c mp cs His bones are like tubes of brass. His limbs are like bars of iron.
- Job 41:15 אֲפִיקֵ֣י n c mp cs Strong scales are his pride, Shut up together with a close seal.
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 18:15 אֲפִ֥יקֵי n c mp cs Then the channels of waters appeared, The foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, Yahweh, At the blast of the breath of your nostrils.
- Psalms 42:1 אֲפִֽיקֵי n c mp cs As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants after you, God.
- Psalms 126:4 כַּ/אֲפִיקִ֥ים prep + n c mp Restore our fortunes again, Yahweh, Like the streams in the Negev.
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 7 verses
- Ezekiel 6:3 לָ/אֲפִיקִ֣ים prep det + n c mp and say, You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: Thus says the Lord Yahweh to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword on you, and I will destroy your high places.
- Ezekiel 31:12 אֲפִיקֵ֣י n c mp cs Strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: on the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.
- Ezekiel 32:6 וַ/אֲפִקִ֖ים conj + n c mp I will also water with your blood the land in which you swim, even to the mountains; and the watercourses shall be full of you.
- Ezekiel 34:13 בָּ/אֲפִיקִ֕ים prep det + n c mp I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country.
- Ezekiel 35:8 אֲפִיקֶ֔י/ךָ n c mp cs + sfx pers 2ms I will fill its mountains with its slain: in your hills and in your valleys and in all your watercourses shall they fall who are slain with the sword.
- Ezekiel 36:4 לָ/אֲפִיקִ֣ים prep det + n c mp therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: Thus says the Lord Yahweh to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which are become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that are round about;
- Ezekiel 36:6 לָ/אֲפִיקִ֨ים prep det + n c mp Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and tell the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in my wrath, because you have borne the shame of the nations:
Joel 2 verses
- Joel 1:20 אֲפִ֣יקֵי n c mp cs Yes, the animals of the field pant to you, For the water brooks have dried up, And the fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.
- Joel 3:18 אֲפִיקֵ֥י n c mp cs It will happen in that day, That the mountains will drop down sweet wine, The hills will flow with milk, All the brooks of Judah will flow with waters; And a fountain will come forth from the house of Yahweh, And will water the valley of Shittim.
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.
אפיק — transliterated ʼâphîyq — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “channel.” Where the King James Version says “rivers,” newer translations reach for “ravines” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 19 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Ezekiel. BDB distinguishes 3 senses for it. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H650 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 →
- 19
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 19 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,563
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,563 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 19 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 19 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 58%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 42%
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: Rivers 6×, All the rivers 2×, Channels 2×
- American Standard Version: Watercourses 5×, Channels 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ravines 7×, Streams 4×, Channels 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Streambeds 3×, Streams 3×, Channels of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H650 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H650 across 16 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H650 across 19 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear 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 H650 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 3 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.
- channel
- ravine
- of hollow bones (figuratively)
Word origin
[ אָפִיק ] n.m. channel (as holding, confining water; poet.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אסף (ʼâçaph) (H622) — to gather.
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.
אָפִיק
- to break through, go forth; b) to be a free man, ruler)
- 1. spring, rivulet(ch..—Pl. אֲפִיקִים. Ab. Zar. 54ᵇ bot.
- 2. ruler. Pl. as above. Cant. R. to V, 12 (allud. to ăfiké mayim, Cant. ib.) שהם א׳ על וכ׳ they (the scholars) are appointed officers over the waters of the Law.
נְפַק
- (corresp. to h. יצא) same,
- 1. to go out, come out; to result, end. Targ. O. VIII, 7 מִיפַּק ed. Berl. (oth. ed. a. Y. מֵיפַק); a. v. fr.—Y. Ber. I, 2ᶜ top שרי מלכא נ׳ וכ׳ when the king begins to march out, even if he has not yet gone out, we say, he has gone out. Ib. 3ᶜ bot. הוינן נַפְקִין לתעניתא we went out for fast and prayer. Koh. R. to X, 8 מִינְּפַק ליה (= מן נ׳) after he came out. Y. Taan. IV, 69ᵃ מִנַּפְקִין when they came out; Lam. R. to II, 2 מן דנַפְקוּן. Y. l. c. לא נפקון טבאות (Matt. K. to Lam. R. l. c. לא נַפְקַת להון) they did not end well. Pesik. B’shall., p. 94ᵃ וגוש חלבאי נפקין וכ׳ and the men of Giscala went out after them with sticks &c.; Koh. R. to XI, 2 וגוש חלב אנפקין (corr. acc.); a. v. fr.—Imperat. פּוּק. Targ. Gen. VIII, 16; a. fr.—Erub. 14ᵇ, a. e. פ׳ חזי וכ׳, v. דְּבַר. Sabb. 106ᵃ, a. e. פ׳ תני וכ׳, v. בַּר I ch.—Part. נָפֵיק. Targ. I Kings XV, 17; v. next w.; a. fr.—(כנ׳) כד נפיק ביה = h. כיוצא בו (v. יָצָא) similar to, corresponding. Targ. Y. II, Gen. II, 18. Targ. Y. Deut. XIV, 8 (not כַּנְפֵיק, כַּנְפַק).—Y. Ber. VI, 10ᵇ bot. נ׳ אנא ידי חובתי do I do my duty?, v. יָצָא. Succ. 36ᵇ ונ׳ בה and used it for doing his duty (for the ceremony of Ethrog).—Y. Sabb. VI, 8ᵃ top, a. e. מה נָ׳ מן ביניהון what is the outcome from between them?, i.e. what is the difference between them in practice?—נפקא מינה וכ׳ the practical difference is &c. Bets. 6ᵇ למאי נ׳ מינה in regard to what practice is there a difference (whether or not eggs found in a chicken can be hatched)? למקח וממכר it makes a difference in trade (if one bought eggs for breeding). Keth. 72ᵃ מאי נ׳ לה מינה תיעביד what difference does it make to her? let her do it; a. v. fr.—Tem. 7ᵃ נ׳ ליה וכ׳ it is derived from the Biblical word &c. Ib. תֵּיפוּק ליה זריקה וכ׳ let ‘sprinkling’ be derived from &c.—Gen. R. s. 52 ונֵיפוֹק ידוי and do justice to it (to the verse to be explained), v. supra.
- 2. to take out, exclude. Sabb. 74ᵃ ולֵיפוּק חדא וכ׳ let him take out one (of the enumerated categories) and insert another one. Ḥull. 43ᵃ לא תִיפַּק, v. infra.—[Targ. Am. IX, 13, v. infra.]
- , Haf. הַנְפַּק
- 1. to lead forth, carry forth; to bring forth, produce; to derive; to take out, exclude. Targ. Ex. XVI, 3. Targ. Am. IX, 13 במַפִּיק ed. Lag. (oth. ed. במִפַּק, corr. acc.). Targ. Job XV, 13; a. fr.—Ber. 38ᵃ (ref. to המוציא in the benediction over bread) דא׳ משמע it means ‘who has brought forth’; דמַפִּיק משמע it means ‘who brings forth’. Ib. אַפִּיקוּ ליה ריפתא they brought out bread (and placed it) before him. Ib. (ref. to המוציא, Ex. VI, 7) כד מַפִּיקְנָא לכו … דאַפֵּיקִית וכ׳ when I lead you forth, I shall do for you a thing that you may know that it is I who led you forth. Sot. 16ᵇ; R. Hash. 13ᵃ לא תַפִּיק נפשך יכ׳ do not let thyself go beyond the established rule. B. Bath. 60ᵃ דהוה מַפִּיק וכ׳ which led to (opened towards) etc. Tem. 3ᵇ מפיק שם וכ׳ utters the name of the Lord in vain. Ib. 7ᵃ מַפְּקִינָן לבמת יחיד we derive from it a rule for individual high-places.—Ḥull. 42ᵇ אַפֵּיק חדא וכ׳ take out one category and insert another. Ib. 43ᵃ top הנך דאַפְּקַת לא תַפִּיק Tosaf. (ed. לא תיפק) the two which thou didst exclude, do not exclude; a. v. fr.—לְאַפּוּקֵי or לַאֲפוּקֵי to the exclusion of, v. אַפֵּק. e.g. Exodus 6:7
- 2. to take out by legal decision; to collect; to claim. Keth. 76ᵇ מייתי אב ראיה ומפיק the father brings evidence and gets a verdict for collecting, opp. ומוקים for letting the money stand where it is. Y. Gitt. I, end, 43ᵈ ואַפְּקוּן מיניה and collected from him. Ib. בעון מִיפְּקָא (v. supra Pe. 2) they wanted to collect. Y. Shebu. VII, 38ᵃ top אתון ואַפְּקוּן דלא וכ׳ they came and claimed that he had not given them anything; a. fr.
- , Ithaf. אִתְאֵפַּק to be carried forth. Targ. Gen. XXXVIII, 25; a. fr.—Y. Gitt. VI, 48ᵃ bot. אתא׳ למקטלא was led out to be executed.
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 15 distinct written forms H650 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H650, 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
- אסיף ʼâçîyph H614 harvest
- אסף ʼâçuph H624 storehouse
- אסף ʼôçeph H625 harvest
- אספה ʼăçêphâh H626 gathering
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 7 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 19 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.
