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צְבֹיִים

Zeboim

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Zeboim’ fuller range ↓

H6636 Strong's Hebrew
Tsᵉbôʼîym Transliteration
/tseb-o-eem'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 8 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.

The Hebrew name צבאים centers on the idea of “Zeboim.” It occurs a mere 5 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Genesis (60%), then Deuteronomy and Hosea. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 10:19. For the data behind this summary, explore 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Zeboiim
Modern gloss
Zeboim
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 H6636 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.
3 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
Genesis 10:19
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in Genesis 10:19.
Hosea 11:8
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Hosea 11:8.
#2,625
by frequency
Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 4 · 80%
  • Historical 0 · 0%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 1 · 20%

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.

  • Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 80%
  • 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: Zeboiim 2×, Zeboim 2×
  • American Standard Version: Zeboiim 4×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Zeboiim 4×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Zeboiim 4×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H6636 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Zeboiim” 2×
  • “Zeboim” 2×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H6636 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Zeboiim” 4×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H6636 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Zeboiim” 4×

Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H6636 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Zeboiim” 4×

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 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. Zeboim or Zeboiim = "gazelles"
  2. one of the 5 cities in the plain which included Sodom and Gomorrah

Word origin

n.pr.loc. near Sodom, Gn 14:2, 8; Dt 29:22 = צְבֹיִם Gn 10:19 = צְבֹאִים Ho 11:8 Kt (צְבוֹיִם Qr); Σεβωειμ.

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from צבי (tsᵉbîy) (H6643) — beauty.

Part of speech: Proper Name Location


Forms in the corpus

The 7 distinct written forms H6636 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
צביים Noun, Proper Genesis 14:2 2
ו/צביים Noun, Proper Deuteronomy 29:23 1
וּ/צְבֹיִ֖ם Noun, Proper Genesis 10:19 1
וּ/צְבוֹיִ֔ם Noun, Proper Deuteronomy 29:23 1
כִּ/צְבֹאיִ֑ם Noun, Proper Hosea 11:8 1
צְבוֹיִ֔ים Noun, Proper Genesis 14:2 1
צְבוֹיִ֔ם Noun, Proper Genesis 14:8 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6636, 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

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.


Bible dictionary

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

Gazelles or roes. (1.) One of the "five cities of the plain" of Sodom, generally coupled with Admah (Gen. 10:19; 14:2; Deut. 29:23; Hos. 11:8). It had a king of its own (Shemeber), and was therefore a place of some importance. It was destroyed along with the other cities of the plain.

(2.) A valley or rugged glen somewhere near Gibeah in Benjamin (1 Sam. 13:18). It was probably the ravine now bearing the name Wady Shakh-ed-Dub'a, or "ravine of the hyena," north of Jericho.

(3.) A place mentioned only in Neh. 11:34, inhabited by the Benjamites after the Captivity.

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(gazelles).

+ One of the five cities of the "plain" or circle of Jordan. It is mentioned in (Genesis 10:19; 14:2,8; 29:23; Hosea 11:8) in each, of which passages it is either coupled with Admah or placed next it in the lists--perhaps represented by Talaa Sebaan, a name attached to extensive ruins on the high ground between the Dead Sea and Kerak . In (Genesis 14:2,8) the name is given more correctly in the Authorized Version ZEBOIIM. + The valley of Zeboim, a ravine or gorge, apparently east of Michmash, mentioned only in (1 Samuel 13:18) The road running from Michmash to the east is specified as "the road of the border that looketh to the ravine of Zeboim toward the wilderness." The wilderness is no doubt the district of uncultivated mountain tops and sides which lies between the central district of Benjamin and the Jordan valley. In that very district there is a wild gorge bearing the name of Shuk ed-Dubba', ravine of the hyena, "the exact equivalent of Ge hat-tsebo'im .

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


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.

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).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.