אָפַק
to hold
also: be strong, restrain, hold back 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hithpael
- The reflexive or reciprocal stem (the subject acts on itself).
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”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- 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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (29%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Infinitive Construct 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Hithpael, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H662 appears — 7 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
- Genesis 43:31 וַ/יִּ֨תְאַפַּ֔ק conj + Hithpael wimpf 3ms He washed his face, and came out. He controlled himself, and said, "Serve the meal."
- Genesis 45:1 לְ/הִתְאַפֵּ֗ק prep + Hithpael inf.cs Then Joseph couldn't control himself before all those who stood before him, and he cried, "Cause every man to go out from me!" There stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brothers.
1 Samuel 1 verse
Esther 1 verse
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 42:14 אֶתְאַפָּ֑ק Hithpael impf 1cs I have long time held my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: [now] will I cry out like a travailing woman; I will gasp and pant together.
- Isaiah 63:15 הִתְאַפָּֽקוּ Hithpael pf 3cp Look down from heaven, and see from the habitation of your holiness and of your glory: where are your zeal and your mighty acts? the yearning of your heart and your compassion is restrained toward me.
- Isaiah 64:12 תִתְאַפַּ֖ק Hithpael impf 2ms Will you refrain yourself for these things, Yahweh? will you hold your peace, and afflict us very sore?
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.
“to hold” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb אפק (ʼâphaq). Scripture first uses it in Genesis 43:31. It appears 7 verses across 4 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a third of its appearances fall in Isaiah. Not a single-sense word: its full sense range also takes in “be strong”, “restrain”, and “hold back”. See the sense tree, 7-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H662 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 57%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 29%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 14%
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: Refrained 3×
- American Standard Version: Refrained 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Are restrained 1×, Control himself 1×, I felt compelled 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: But 1×, Control himself 1×, He controlled himself 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H662 across 7 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 H662 across 7 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H662 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H662 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. force, compel oneself
- 2. restrain oneself, refrain
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
[ אָפַק ] vb. hold, be strong —only Hithp.
— 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.
אַפֵּק
- (Af. of נפק q. v.) to bring out, take away.—לְאַפּוּקֵי to the exclusion of. Ned. 41ᵃ; a. fr. = למעוטי, להוציא, v. מעט, יצא.
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 H662 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶתְאַפָּ֑ק | Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Isaiah 42:14 | 1 |
| הִתְאַפָּֽקוּ | Verb, Hithpael, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 63:15 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּ֨תְאַפַּ֔ק | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 43:31 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּתְאַפַּ֣ק | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Esther 5:10 | 1 |
| וָֽ/אֶתְאַפַּ֔ק | Verb, Hithpael, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | 1 Samuel 13:12 | 1 |
| לְ/הִתְאַפֵּ֗ק | Verb, Hithpael, Infinitive Construct | Genesis 45:1 | 1 |
| תִתְאַפַּ֖ק | Verb, Hithpael, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 64:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H662, 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.
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 → 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 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
