אֵ֫פֶר
ashes
‘ashes’ 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.
20 distinct verses where H665 appears in the Absolute state, across 12 books. Filtered view — show all forms. 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 1 verse
2 Samuel 1 verse
Esther 2 verses
- Esther 4:1 וָ/אֵ֑פֶר conj + n c ms Now when Mordecai knew all that was done, Mordecai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry;
- Esther 4:3 וָ/אֵ֔פֶר conj + n c ms In every province, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
Job 4 verses
- Job 2:8 הָ/אֵֽפֶר ptcl def.art + n c ms He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.
- Job 13:12 אֵ֑פֶר n c ms Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, Your defenses are defenses of clay.
- Job 30:19 וָ/אֵֽפֶר conj + n c ms He has cast me into the mire. I have become like dust and ashes.
- Job 42:6 וָ/אֵֽפֶר conj + n c ms Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes."
Psalms 2 verses
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 44:20 אֵ֔פֶר n c ms He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he can't deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
- Isaiah 58:5 וָ/אֵ֨פֶר֙ conj + n c ms Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Yahweh?
- Isaiah 61:3 אֵ֗פֶר n c ms to appoint to those who mourn in Zion, to give to them a garland for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he may be glorified.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Lamentations 1 verse
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 27:30 בָּ/אֵ֖פֶר prep det + n c ms and shall cause their voice to be heard over you, and shall cry bitterly, and shall cast up dust on their heads, they shall wallow themselves in the ashes:
- Ezekiel 28:18 לְ/אֵ֨פֶר֙ prep + n c ms By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your traffic, you have profaned your sanctuaries; therefore have I brought forth a fire from the midst of you; it has devoured you, and I have turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all those who see you.
Daniel 1 verse
Jonah 1 verse
Malachi 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, אפר (ʼêpher) means “ashes.” Scripture first uses it in Genesis 18:27. With 22 verses in 13 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Ranging over 2 senses, it is not a single-sense word. Sharing its root, it stands alongside אפר. 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 H665 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 →
- 22
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
- 13 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 13 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,412
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,412 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 22 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 22 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 45%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 41%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 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: Ashes 16×
- American Standard Version: Ashes 15×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ashes 19×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ashes 16×, Ashes of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H665 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H665 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H665 across 22 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear 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 H665 across 22 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.
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.
- ashes
- (CLBL) worthlessness (figuratively)
Word origin
n.[m.] ashes (as light, flying?)—א׳ abs. Gn 18:27 +; cstr. Nu 19:9, 10—ashes of red heifer, used in purifications Nu 19:9, 10; on head, as sign of humiliation 2 S 13:19; contrition Dn 9:3 (‖ צוֹם, שַׂק), Jon 3:6 (‖ שַׂק) cf. Jb 42:6 (עָפָר וא׳), Is 58:5 (‖ שַׂק); mourning Est 4:1, 3 (‖ שַׂק) cf. Jb 2:8 (ישׁב בתוך הא׳), Je 6:26 (‖ שַׂק), Ez 27:30 (‖ עפר); in sim. scattereth hoarfrost כָּא׳ ψ 147:16; but also as filthy, loathsome כעפר וא׳ Jb 30:19 (Di sim. of mourning, grief), as worthless, מִשְׁלֵי א׳ Jb 13:12 proverbs of ashes; fig. of worthlessness Is 44:20; insignificance עפר וא׳ Gn 18:27; ignominy Ez 28:18 Mal 3:21; distress & sorrow א׳ כַּלֶּחֶם אָכָ֑לְתִּי ψ 102:10 (so Assyrian cf. ZimBP 42) cf. La 3:16 Is 61:3 (פְּאֵר תַּחַת אֵפֶר).
— 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 bestrew
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.
*אפר
- , Y. Bicc. II, beg. 64ᶜ bot. א׳ חמשים, א׳ שתין—. The entire passage is corrupt, and allows no inference that אפר means (= עבר) to pass, be past. The text possibly read: אפי׳, אפי׳ (בן) חמשים ועשה דבר שהוא בהיכרת (בן) ששים ועשה דבר שהוא בעון מיתה מת בהיכרת כהא דתני ר׳ חנינ׳ וכ׳. [אבל רב חדי a. אבל חדי ibid. (read: אבל רבתי) is a gloss referr. to Treat. S’maḥoth ch. III.]
אֵפֶר
- ashes. Ohol. II, 2 א׳ שרופים ashes of persons burnt to death (by accident). B. Bath. 60ᵇ; Taan. II, 1 א׳ מקלה calcined ashes (symbol of mourning, supplication &c.). Y. ib. II, 65ᵃ אֶפְרוֹ של יצחק the ashes of (the ram substituted for) Isaac. Gen. R. s. 49. Lev. R. s. 36; a. fr.
אֲפַר
- (√פר, cmp. Ges. H. Dict. s. v. פרא) pasture-ground (outside of the town), in gen. meadow. Bets. V, 7. Pes. 8ᵇ; a. fr.
אֲפַר ²
- Targ. Y. II, Ex. II, 3; 5 (Var. אפרה; Targ. O. יערא). [Y. Sabb. I, 3ᵇ חד אפר, v. חוֹחָא.]
פְּרַר
- to be broken, crushed, crumbled. Targ. Ps. XXII, 15 Ms., v. פַּרְפֵּר I.—Pes. 74ᵇ דמִפְּרִיר (Ms. M. דמִיפְּרַךְ; Ms. O. דמִיפְּרַד), v. סְמִידָא.
- to make void, invalidate. Ned. 73ᵃ לכי שמע לֵיפֵר לה הוא when he hears of the vow, why does he not disallow it himself (what need has he of the agent)? Ib. 70ᵃ לא מצי מֵיפַר he has no power to invalidate her vows. Ib. 70ᵇ לא מצי מיפר אב her father has no power &c.; a. e.
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 17 distinct written forms H665 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H665, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 20 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 22 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
- Genesis 18:27
- Numbers 19:9
- 2 Samuel 13:19
- Esther 4:1
- Job 2:8
- Psalms 102:9
- Isaiah 44:20
- Jeremiah 6:26
- Lamentations 3:16
- Ezekiel 27:30
- Daniel 9:3
- Jonah 3:6
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.
