אֹ֫פֶל
darkness
‘darkness’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 8 times (89%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H652 appears — 8 distinct verses across 3 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.
Job 5 verses
- Job 3:6 אֹ֥פֶל n c ms As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
- Job 10:22 אֹ֗פֶל אֹֽפֶל n c ms cs n c ms The land dark as midnight, Of the shadow of death, without any order, Where the light is as midnight.'"
- Job 23:17 אֹֽפֶל n c ms Because I was not cut off before the darkness, Neither did he cover the thick darkness from my face.
- Job 28:3 אֹ֣פֶל n c ms Man sets an end to darkness, And searches out, to the furthest bound, The stones of obscurity and of thick darkness.
- Job 30:26 אֹֽפֶל n c ms When I looked for good, then evil came; When I waited for light, there came darkness.
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 1 verse
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.
At its core, אפל (ʼôphel) means “darkness.” The word gravitates to Job (63%), then Psalms and Isaiah. It appears 8 verses across 3 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. Older and newer Bibles part ways — “darkness” in the King James Version, “gloom” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. 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 H652 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.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 88%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 13%
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: Darkness 5×
- American Standard Version: Darkness 3×, Obscurity 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Darkness 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Gloom 5×, Darkness 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H652 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H652 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 H652 across 8 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H652 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 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. darkness, of night ψ 91:6 (opp. צָֽהֳרָֽיִם); deep in the earth, אֶבֶן א׳ Jb 28:3 (‖ חֹשֶׁךְ, צַלְמָוֶת); darkness, gloom of underworld Jb 10:22(×2) (‖ אֶרֶץ חֹשֶׁךְ, א׳ עֵיפָפָה, צַלְמָוֶת); personif. Jb 3:6 that night—let darkness take it יִקָּחֵהוּ א׳; fig. of spiritual darkness Is 29:18 (‖ חֹשֶׁךְ); of secrecy, treachery ψ 11:2. e.g. Psalms 91:6
- 2. especially fig. of calamity Jb 23:17 (‖ חשׁך q.v.), 30:26 (opp. אוֹר). e.g. Job 23:17
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.m. Jb 3:6 darkness, gloom (only poet.)—א׳ always abs.—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אפל (ʼâphêl) (H651) — gloomy.
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.
אָפַל
- , only in Hif. הֶאֱפִיל (denom. of אָפֵל q. v.) to make dark, obscure. Sabb. 86ᵃ bot. מַאֲפִיל בטליתו he makes dark by spreading his cloak (cover) over himself. Y. B. Bath. III, 13ᶜ top עומד ומא׳ the tree stands there and takes the light away.—2) to be late in ripening, giving birth, &c.; to have late crops. Y. Shebi. V, beg. 35ᵈ שנים מַאֲפִילוֹת years slow in ripening, when the crop is delayed. Gen. R. s. 99 שהיא מַאֲפֶלֶת which has late crops.
אֲפַל
- Pa. אַפֵּיל as foreg. Hif. 1). B. Bath. 7ᵃ קא מאפלת עלי thou makest my building dark, obstructest my light.
אָפֵל I
- (√אף, v. אפף; cmp. אבל, הבל) [thick vapory,]
- 1. dark. Sabb. 86ᵃ, a. fr. בית א׳ a dark (windowless) house.—אֲפֵילָה f. dark place. Y. Naz. IX, 57ᵈ top; Pes. 81ᵇ בא׳, במים in water or in a dark place (cave).—Pl. fem. אֲפֵילוֹת. Lev. R. s. 9 מבואות א׳ dark alleys; a. fr.
- 2. heavy, sluggish, slow, late. Denom. האפיל, v. אָפַל.
אָפֵל II
- Keren Afel (Dark-Horn), name of a height. Taan. 22ᵇ עד שישב וכ׳ Ms. M. (ed. שיעמוד) until one sits on Ker. Afel and can bathe his feet in water. Ib. חזייא לי קרן א׳ … ed. (Ms. ההיא דוכתא) I have seen (that place) K. A.
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 7 distinct written forms H652 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֹֽפֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 10:22 | 3 |
| אֹ֗פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Job 10:22 | 1 |
| אֹ֝֗פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 11:2 | 1 |
| אֹ֣פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 28:3 | 1 |
| אֹ֥פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 3:6 | 1 |
| בָּ/אֹ֣פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 91:6 | 1 |
| וּ/מֵ/אֹ֣פֶל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 29:18 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H652, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
