צֶ֫בַע
dyed cloth
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
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 2 times (67%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6648 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
Judges 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.
צבע (tsebaʻ) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “dyed cloth.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 1 verse. It clusters heavily in Judges, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. Scripture uses it exactly once, at Judges 5:30. It clusters with אצבע, צבוע and צבע under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6648 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.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Judges 1 verse 100%
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 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: Divers colours 3×
- American Standard Version: Dyed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Dyed garments 1×, Garments 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Dyed fabrics 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6648 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6648 across 3 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6648 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6648 across 3 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 BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- dye, dyed stuff, something dyed, coloured cloth
Word origin
n.[m.] dye, dyed stuff;—cstr. צ׳ רִקְמָתַיִם Ju 5:30 (perhaps del. צ׳, cf. GFM); pl. שְׁלַל צְבָעִים booty of dyed stuffs v 30(×2).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: from an unused root meaning to dip (into colouring fluid)
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.
צָבַע I
- (cmp. צָבַט) to seize, handle. Ḥag. 22ᵇ שנקיי … צוֹבְעִין ed., v. צָבַט.
- (denom. of אֶצְבַּע) to raise one or more fingers for the casting of lots. Yoma II, 1 הממונה … הַצְבִּיעוּ the superintending priest said to them, raise your fingers; Tam. 28ᵃ; Y. Yoma II, 39ᵈ top, expl. הוציאו אצבע.
צְבַע
- ; Pa. צַבַּע, with פייסא (v. preced.Hif.) to cast lots. Targ. II Esth. III, 7; IX, 24.
צָבַע II
- (cmp. טָבַע I) to dip; to dye. Orl. III, 1 בגד שצְבָעוֹ וכ׳ a garment which one dyed with shells of fruits forbidden as ‘Orlah (v. עָרְלָה). Sabb. VII, 2 והצוֹבְעוֹ and he who dyes it (the wool). Ib. 75ᵃ, sq., a. fr. (חייב) משום צוֹבֵעַ he is guilty because it is an act coming under the category of dyeing; a. fr.—[Y. Sabb. VI, 7ᵈ צובעין תותבן, read: צבעונין או זהובין, v. צִבְעוֹן.]—V. צוֹבַע.—Part. pass. צָבוּעַ; f. צְבוּעָה; pl. צְבוּעִים, צְבוּעִין; צְבוּעוֹת. Gen. R. s. 96, v. בּוּרְדִּיקָא. Num. R. s. 2 מפה שלו צ׳ אדום his flag was red-colored. Meg. IV, 7 מי שהיו ידיו צ׳ וכ׳ he whose hands are spotted from handling woad; a. fr.—Sot. 22ᵇ הצ׳ the painted (hypocrites), v. פָּרוּשׁ.—V. צָבוּעַ.
צְבַע ²
- , to dip; to dye. Targ. Y. Ex. XII, 22 Ar. (ed. טמש; h. text טבל). Targ. Y. II, Lev. IV, 6 יִצְבּוֹעַ.—Y. Sabb. II, 4ᵈ top, v. פְּתִילְתָּא.—Y. Taan. IV, end, 69ᶜ הוה צ׳ פיסתיה וכ׳ dipped his bread in ashes. Koh. R. to VII, 11 הוה צ׳ חדא וכ׳ dipped one of his fingers in blood of a swine. Y. B. Kam. IX, 6ᵈ bot. א"ל צִיבְעֵיה סומק וצַבְעֵיה אוכם if he told the dyer, dye it red, and he dyed it black; אילו צְבַעְתֵּיה סומק וכ׳ if thou hadst dyed it red, it would have been worth &c. Men. 42ᵇ הא … היכי צַבְעִיתוּ לה how do you dye the purple-blue?; a. e.
- same, to dip, immerse. Targ. O. Lev. XIII, 6 (Y. יִצְכַּע Pe.; h. text כבס). Ib. XIV, 9; a. fr.
- to be dipped, immersed; to be soaked. Ib. XIII, 58. Targ. Cant. V, 2.
צֶבַע
- preced.) dye, color; dyed material. Sifra B’har, ch. I לצבוע בה צ׳ to use it for dyeing. Arakh. VI, 5 (24ᵃ) צ׳ שצבעו לשמן (not שצבען) dyed cloth which he had dyed for them (his wife and children). Mikv. VII, 3 מי הצ׳ dye-water. Num. R. s. 2; a. fr.—Pl. צְבָעִים, צְבָעִין. Ib. וצבע מפה שלו דומה לי"ב צ׳ and the color of his (Benjamin’s) flag was like the twelve colors (combined); a. e.—V. צוֹבַע.
צֶבַע ²
- constr. צְבַע. Targ. Ex. XXV, 4 צְ׳ זהורי (h. text תולעת שני). Targ. Lev. XIV, 4; a. fr.—Sabb. 75ᵃ דליציל צִיבְעֵיה that its color may be so much brighter. Y. Pes. III, beg. 29ᵈ בגין דיקלוט צ׳ in order that it may take the dye; a. e.
צַבָּע
- (preced.) dyer. Sabb. 11ᵇ, v. דּוּגְמָא. B. Kam. IX, 4; a. fr.—Pl. צַבָּעִים, צַבָּעִין. Pes. III, 1, v. זוֹמָא I. Tosef. Shebi. V, 8. Y. Sabb. VII, 10ᶜ top הצ׳ שבירושלים וכ׳ the dyers in Jerusalem considered wringing (the dyed clothes) a special art; Tosef. Sabb. IX (X), 18; a. fr.
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 3 distinct written forms H6648 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| צְבָעִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 5:30 | 1 |
| צְבָעִים֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 5:30 | 1 |
| צֶ֥בַע | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Judges 5:30 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6648, 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.
Derived from this word
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 5 — 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 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.
