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אֶ֫פֶס דַּמִּים

Ephes Dammim

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Ephes Dammim’ fuller range ↓

H658 Strong's Hebrew
ʼEpheç Dammîym Transliteration
/eh'-fes dam-meem'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 2 appearances

Compare with another word →

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, אפס דמים (ʼEpheç Dammîym) means “Ephes Dammim.” It is rare — just 1 verse in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Samuel (100% of all occurrences). Found nowhere else but 1 Samuel 17:1. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Ephes-dammim
Modern gloss
Ephes Dammim
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H658 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 →

1
distinct verses
The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
1 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
1 Samuel 17:1
only appearance
This word occurs only once, in 1 Samuel 17:1.
#4,807
by frequency
Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 1 · 100%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 0 · 0%

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 1 distinct verse.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 100%

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: Ephesdammim 1×
  • American Standard Version: Ephes-dammim 1×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Ephes-dammim 1×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Dammim 1×, Ephes 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H658 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Ephesdammim” 1×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H658 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Ephes-dammim” 1×

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H658 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Ephes-dammim” 1×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H658 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Dammim” 1×
  • “Ephes” 1×

Senses in BDB

The 2 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.

  1. Ephes Dammim = "edge of blood"
  2. a place approx 16 miles (25 kilometers) southwest of Jerusalem

Word origin

Derived from אפס (ʼepheç) (H657) — end.

Part of speech: Proper Name Location


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.

אֶפֶס

  • v. next w.) [extremity,] ankle.—Dual אַפְסַיִים. Yoma 77ᵇ. Cmp. אוּפְסַיִם.

אָפֵס

  • , v. פסס to cut off)
  • 1. to be gone.—[As a noun: there is an end of …] B. Bath. 111ᵃ אפס (דברי) זכריה (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l.) (the words of) Zachariah (to whom you refer as an authority) are (is) gone, i.e. they are no authority.
  • 2. homiletically used as though a Greek word (ἄφες) let go, leave alone. Pesik. Vattomer p. 130ᵃ (ref. to heäfes, Ps. LXXVII, 9) לשון יוני הוא כמד"א אָפֵיס it is a Greek word, as if you were to say, afes (let alone); Lam. R. to I, 2 וכמד"א אמר אפס (strike out ואמר, a. read אפיס); Ex. R. s. 45 לשון יוני אפס הניח in Greek aphes means, (he) let go; Yalk. Ps. 816.—[Gen. R. s. 40 (ref. to efes Jud. IV, 9); omitted in Yalk. Gen. 67,—an interpolation from passages quoted above.] e.g. Psalms 77:9

אָפֵס ²

  • Afes, an Amora. Sabb. 59ᵇ; a. fr.

אָפַס

  • dialect. for אָפַץ q. v.

אָפַץ

  • (√אף, v. אפף; cmp. חפץ) to press, squeeze, contract.—Part. pass. אָפוּץ. Ohol. IX, 3 a gap which was filled with straw או אֲפוּצָה or was made narrower by squeezing the parts together (e.g. pressing the lid down). Tosef. ib. X, 6 אֲפוּסָה a narrowing of the gap by pressing. Y. Sabb. III, 6ᶜ באפוצה when the wick is compressed in the candlestick. Ib. V, beg. 7ᵇ באֲפוּצִים when the vessels are closely packed. Y. Pes. I, 27ᶜ top אֲפוּצוֹת.

דָּם

  • , constr. דַּם (b. h.; דום or דמם, cmp. דבב) liquid; blood; life. Men. 44ᵃ בדָמוֹ (not בדמה, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) with the juice of the purple shell.—Sabb. 31ᵇ רביעית ד׳ וכ׳ one fourth of a Log of blood did I (the Lord) put in your body (the smallest quantity required to sustain life, v. Sot. 5ᵃ). Snh. 72ᵇ (ref. to Gen. IX, 6) הצל דָּמוֹ וכ׳ save the life of the one (who is pursued) at the expense of the life of the other (the pursuer).—דַּם ברית = ד׳ של מילה the blood lost at circumcision. Tosef. Sabb. XV (XVI), 9 צריך להטיף … ד׳ ב׳ he must cause the blood of the covenant to flow from him (even if born without preputium). Ib. 8; a. fr.—Pes. 16ᵇ ד׳ שהנפש וכ׳ the blood with which life escapes when cutting the animal’s throat is called a fluid (with regard to levitical purity, v. כָּשַׁר); a. v. fr.—Pl. דָּמִים. Keth. 9ᵇ טענת ד׳ complaint of absence of the token of virginity.—שְׁפִיכוּת ד׳ (abbr. ש"ד) murder. Yoma 67ᵇ; a. fr.—Midd. III, 1, a. e. ד׳ העליונים blood sprinkled against the upper part of the altar, opp. ד׳ התחתונים.—Snh. VIII, 6, a. fr. (with ref. to Ex. XXII, 1) יש לו ד׳ his blood is revenged, אין לו ד׳ may be killed with impunity. Ib. 72ᵃ בד׳ קננהו he acquired possession of them by risking his life.—[דָּמִים equivalent, v. דָּמִים.) e.g. Genesis 9:6

דָּמִים

  • , constr. דְּמֵי (דמה) equivalent, compensation; (cmp. שָׁוָה) price, value; payment. Pes. 112ᵇ do not bargain בשעה שאין לך ד׳ when thou hast no money to pay with. Kerith. 13ᵇ ד׳ וערכין the assessment of an object to be redeemed or of an object the value of which was dedicated, v. עֶרֶךְ.—Pes. 32ᵃ לפי מידה … או לפי ד׳ וכ׳ must he pay the fine according to quantity or according to value?—Kidd. I, 6 כל הנעשה ד׳ באחר whatever is used as payment for another object; expl. ib. 28ᵃ כל הנישום ד׳ וכ׳ whatever is assessed as an equivalent, i.e. an exchange is meant and not a sale for cash. Ib. 28ᵇ החליף דמי שור בפרה if he gives a cow in payment of money which he owes for an ox; a. fr.—Keth. 103ᵇ נהוג נשיאותך בד׳ Ar. conduct thy office of Nasi as something valuable (Var. in Ar., a. ed. ברָמִים).

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 2 distinct written forms H658 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
בְּ/אֶ֥פֶס Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 17:1 1
דַּמִּֽים Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 17:1 1

Bible dictionary

Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Ephes Dammim). 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

Boundary of blood, a place in the tribe of Judah where the Philistines encamped when David fought with Goliath (1 Sam. 17:1). It was probably so called as having been the scene of frequent sanguinary conflicts between Israel and the Philistines. It is called Pas-dammim (1 Chr. 11:13). It has been identified with the modern Beit Fased, i.e., "house of bleeding", near Shochoh (q.v.).

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(cessation of blood-shed), a place between Socoh and Arekah, at which the Philistines were encamped before the affray in which Goliath was killed. (1 Samuel 17:1) Under the shorter form of PAS-DAMMIM it occurs once again in a similar connection. (1 Chronicles 11:13)

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

effusion of blood

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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