צלצל
whirring
‘whirring’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 2 times (33%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 2 times (33%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (17%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (17%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 6 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6767 appears — 5 distinct verses across 5 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.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
2 Samuel 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Isaiah 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.
צלצל (tsᵉlâtsal) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “whirring.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 5 verses. It first appears in Deuteronomy 28:42. Ranging over 3 senses, it is not a single-sense word. It clusters with צלל, מצלה and מצלת 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 H6767 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.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 20%
- 2 Samuel 1 verse 20%
- Job 1 verse 20%
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 5 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 40%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Cymbals 3×
- American Standard Version†: Cymbals 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Cymbals 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Cymbals 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6767 across 6† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6767 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H6767 across 6† 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 H6767 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.
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 0 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.
צלצל I [m.] whirring, buzzing
צלצל II [m.] spear (from whizzing)
צלצל III a whirring locust (cf. Assyrian ṣarṣaru, Arabic صَرْصَرٌ, Syriac ܨܺܝܨܪܳܐ, ܨܰܪܨܽܘܪܳܐ
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
I. n.[m.] whirring, buzzing;—cstr. אֶרֶץ צִלְצַל כְּנָפָ֑יִם Is 18:1 land of buzzing of (insects’) wings (so prob.; other views v. in Di).
II. n.[m.] spear (from whizzing);—cstr. צִלְצַל דָּגִים Jb 40:31 fish-spear, harpoon.
I. n.m. a whirring locust (cf. Assyrian ṣarṣaru, Arabic صَرْصَرٌ, Syriac ܨܺܝܨܪܳܐ, ܨܰܪܨܽܘܪܳܐ; LagGes Abh. 145, N. 9);—Dt 28:42 (devouring; not identif.; TrNHB 313).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from צלל (tsâlal) (H6750) — to tingle.
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.
צִלְצֵל
- (v. צָלַל)
- 1. to vibrate; to have a clear ring. Y. Succ. V, 55ᶜ bot. ולא היה מְצַלְצֵל וכ׳ and it had not the clear ring as before.
- 2. to clap. Pirké d’R. El. ch. XVII ומְצַלְצֶלֶת בכפיה she clapped with her hands (in joy); (Yalk. Kings 232 ומסלסלת בכפי ידיה).
צַלְצֵל
- , to shriek or shout. Y. Ter. VIII, 46ᵇ bot. שרי מְצַלְצֵל he began to shout.
צֶלְצָל
- preced.)
- 1. cymbal. Y. Succ. V, 55ᶜ bot. צ׳ של מקדש וכ׳ the cymbal of the Temple originated from Moses’ days. Ib. 55ᵇ bot. מיריחו … הצי׳ in Jericho they could hear the sound of the cymbal (of the Temple). Shek. V, 1 בן ארזא על הצ׳ (the family of) Ben Arza had charge of the cymbal. Y. ib. 48ᵈ bot. הניף … והקיש בן א׳ בצ׳ when the Sagan waved the flag, B. A. struck the cymbal; Tam. VII, 3; Cant. R. to IV, 4. Arakh. II, 5 והצ׳ לבד only a single cymbal was used in the Temple; a. e.
- 2. shade, covering (v. טְלָלָא). B. Bath. 75ᵃ, contrad. to סוכה (Rashb. צֵל); (correct vers. in) Yalk. Is. 361 (v. Rabb. D. S. B. Bath. l. c. note 9).
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 6 distinct written forms H6767 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְ/צִלְצְלֵי | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 150:5 | 1 |
| בְּֽ/צִלְצְלֵ֥י | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 150:5 | 1 |
| הַ/צְּלָצַֽל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 28:42 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/צִלְצַ֖ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Job 41:7 | 1 |
| וּֽ/בְ/צֶלְצֶלִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Samuel 6:5 | 1 |
| צִלְצַ֣ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 18:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6767, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
