צָמַד
to bind
also: join, fasten fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Niphal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (20%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (20%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 5 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6775 appears — 5 distinct verses across 3 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.
Numbers 2 verses
- Numbers 25:3 וַ/יִּצָּ֥מֶד conj + Niphal wimpf 3ms Israel joined himself to Baal Peor: and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel.
- Numbers 25:5 הַ/נִּצְמָדִ֖ים ptcl def.art + Niphal ptcp.pass mp Moses said to the judges of Israel, Kill you everyone his men who have joined themselves to Baal Peor.
2 Samuel 1 verse
Psalms 2 verses
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, צמד (tsâmad) means “to bind.” It occurs a mere 5 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Numbers (40%), then Psalms and 2 Samuel. First canonically at Numbers 25:3, it enters the text early. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Niphal, Pual, and more). Dig into 5-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6775 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.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 5 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 5 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 40%
- 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: Fastened 1×, Frameth 1×, Joined 1×
- American Standard Version: Fastened 1×, Frameth 1×, Have joined 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Harness 1×, Have joined in worshiping 1×, Joined in worshiping 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 1×, Bound himself 1×, Frames 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6775 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6775 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6775 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6775 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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 3 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.
Niphal
- . join, attach, oneself to Baal Peor, i.e. adopt his worship
Pual
- . a sword bound upon his loins
Hiphil
- . thy tongue combineth (fitteth together, frameth) deceit
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
[ צָמַד ] vb. bind, join
— 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.
צָמַד
- (b. h.) to press together; to join, couple. Gen. R. s. 5 צְמָדָן בין שני בדי הארון ‘Rashi’ (v. comment. Y’fath Toar a. l.) he matched them (arranged them according to ranks) between the two bars of the Ark (ed., a. Yalk. Josh. 14 סמכן; Lev. R. s. 10 שמן).—Part. pass. צָמוּד; f. צְמוּדָה &c. Num. R. s. 12 אין צב אלא צְמוּדוֹת tsab (Num. VII, 3) means well-joined (wagons, by ref. to Is. XLIX, 22 בחצן, v. חוּץ I; v. Targ. a. l.). e.g. Numbers 7:3
- to be attached, yoked. Tanḥ. Bal. 18 [read:] ונִצְמְדוּ זה לזו וכ׳ and they were joined to one another; thus it is written (Num. XXV, 3), and Israel was joined &c.; ed. Bub. 28 ונִצְמָדִים זה וכ׳. e.g. Numbers 25:3
- to crowd, pack.—Part. pass. מְצוּמָּד; pl. מְצוּמָּדִים. Cant. R. to IV, 1 (play on צמתך, ib.) [read:] נראין מצ׳ … כהדין סדרא רבה וכ׳ they appear to be crowded, and yet are comfortable, as at the great school-hall of Sepphoris (cmp. Ab. V, 5).
צְמַד
- 1. to join, attach, harness. Part. pass. צָמִיד; f. צְמִידָא; pl. צְמִידִין, a) attached, harnessed. Targ. I Kings XIX, 19.—b) attached to, addicted to, in the habit of. Lam. R. to III, 9 הוה צמיד עיית קינדלוי וכ׳ Ar. (ed. הוה מסדרא וכ׳; Y. Maas. Sh. V, 56ᵃ top הוה עביד) made it a habit to prepare his lights on Friday &c. (v. עוּת ch.). Lev. R. s. 26 הות צמידא אמרה נכ׳ (some ed. צְמִידָה) was addicted to evil talk.
- 2. to bind up (a broken limb). (a broken limb). Targ. Ez. XXXIV, 4; 16.
- 3. to narrow in, retain. B. Bath. 53ᵃ דצ׳ לה מיא (ed. Pes. a. oth. דצאמת, v. צְמַת) he retained (dammed) the water for the benefit of the field, opp. ארוח let the water spread.
- same,
- 1. to bind up, heal, mend. Part. pass. מְצַמַּד. Ab. Zar. 55ᵃ דאזלי כי מתברי … מְצַמְּדֵי who go (to an idolatrous temple) broken (crippled), and come out healed; Yalk. Ex. 289 מצמידי (corr. acc., or מִיצַמְּדֵי Ithpe.).
- to be bound up, repaired. Ber. 22ᵇ א׳ חצביה דר"נ R. N.’s pitcher has been mended (the rule he laid down is restored again), opp. אתבר, v. חַצְבָּא.
צֶמֶד
- preced.) yoke; a pair of working animals tied to the yoke. B. Bath. V, 1 מבר … את הצ׳ הבקר if one sold ‘a yoke’, he has not sold the oxen (but only the yoke); ib. אמר מכור לי צִמְדְּךָ וכ׳ (Bab. ed. 77ᵇ צִימְ׳) if he said, sell me thy yoke for two hundred Zuz, it is well known that a yoke is not worth two hundred Zuz (therefore he meant the yoke of oxen); v. צִימְדָּא; Tosef. ib. IV, 1. B. Mets. 116ᵃ צ׳ של פרות a pair of cows with the yoke, Rashi (Tosaf. a yoke for cows, consisting of two pieces).—Kidd. 74ᵇ מצִמְדָּהּ Var. in Ar. s. v. צד, v. תַּבְרָא.
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 5 distinct written forms H6775 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/נִּצְמָדִ֖ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Numbers 25:5 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּצָּ֥מֶד | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 25:3 | 1 |
| וַ֭/יִּצָּ֣מְדוּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 106:28 | 1 |
| מְצֻמֶּ֤דֶת | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 20:8 | 1 |
| תַּצְמִ֥יד | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Psalms 50:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6775, 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 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.
