אֶצְבַּע
finger
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
- 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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 1 time (33%)
- Particle, Definite Article 1 time (33%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 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 H677 appears — 3 distinct verses 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.
Daniel 3 verses
- Daniel 2:41 וְ/אֶצְבְּעָתָ֗/א conj + n c fp det + ptcl def.art Whereas you saw the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, because you saw the iron mixed with miry clay.
- Daniel 2:42 וְ/אֶצְבְּעָת֙ conj + n c fp cs As the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
- Daniel 5:5 אֶצְבְּעָן֙ n c fp In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
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, אצבע (ʼetsbaʻ) means “finger.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. Its uses cluster heavily in Daniel (100% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in Daniel 2:41. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H677 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 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 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 3 verses 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 3 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 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†: Toes 2×
- American Standard Version†: Toes 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Toes 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Fingers 1×, Toes 1×, Toes of 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H677 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H677 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 H677 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H677 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 6 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.
- 1. finger, especially
- a. forefinger, of priest, applying blood (P), Ex 29:12; Lv 4:6, 17, 25 + 8 times; applying oil 14:16(×2), 27. e.g. Exodus 29:12
- b. שְׁלַח א׳ of any one Is 58:9, sign of contempt. e.g. Isaiah 58:9
- c. of God, as writing Ex 31:18 (E) Dt 9:10; = act of God Ex 8:15 (J). e.g. Exodus 31:18
- d. pl. of all the fingers 2 S 21:20a; fingers in gen. Is 2:8; 17:8; 59:3 ψ 144:1, Pr 7:3 Ct 5:5; of י׳ ψ 8:4; מֹרֶה בְא׳ Pr 6:13 (of contempt. gesture); as measure of thickness, Je 52:21 four fingers. e.g. 2 Samuel 21:20
- 2. toes: אֶצְבְּעֹת רַגְלָיו 2 S 21:20b, lit. fingers of his feet, cf. א״ ‖ 1 Ch 20:6 = fingers and toes. e.g. 2 Samuel 21:20
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
n.f.Lv 14:6 finger;—א׳ abs. Is 58:9, cstr. Ex 8:15 +; sf. אֶצְבָּעוֹ Lv 4:6 +; pl. אֶצְבָּעוֹת Je 52:21, cstr. אֶצְבְּעֹת 2 S 21:20 +, etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אצבע (ʼetsbaʻ) (H676) — finger.
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.
אֶצְבַּע
- (b. h.; = עצבע; עצב,
- 1. finger, esp. index-finger. Men. 11ᵃ זו א׳ with this (the fourth from the little finger) the measure of ‘a finger’ is taken; Keth. 5ᵇ. Y. Taan. IV, 68ᵈ bot.; Lam. R. to II, 2 (מטיפי) מקוטעי א׳ who had their finger cut off (in evidence of devotion to the cause). Yoma I, 7 א׳ צרדה; Tosef. ib. I, 9 explained א׳ גדולה middle finger; cmp. Tanḥ. Bo, end, expl. אמצעית.—Keth. 71ᵃ הוא נותן א׳ וכ׳ he (the husband) puts his finger between her teeth (and must expect to be bitten), i.e. has to take the consequences of not interfering with her vow in due time.
- 2. any projecting limb resembling the shape of a finger. Ḥull. 61ᵃ א׳ יתירה the projecting toe on a bird’s claw. Tam. IV, 3 (31ᵃ) א׳ הכבד the lobe of the liver.—Fig. (like יד) share, part. Y. Pes. IV, 31ᵃ top; Y. Ab. Zar. I, 40ᵃ top, v. אֶמְצַע.—Pl. אֶצְבָּעוֹת. Ḥag. 15ᵃ; a. fr. (mostly in the sense of finger’s length).—Pes. 112ᵇ; Nidd. 66ᵃ euphem. for membra virilia.—Dual אֶצְבְּעַיִּם, אֶצְבְּעַיִּים, Cant. R. to VIII, 11 גידם א׳ one whose (index) fingers were lopped (stump-like). Ib. that whole trade of mine אינה נקנית אלא בא׳ cannot be acquired except by learning how to use the index-fingers.—Pes. 109ᵃ, a. e. two finger lengths
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 H677 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶצְבְּעָן֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 5:5 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶצְבְּעָת֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Daniel 2:42 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶצְבְּעָתָ֗/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:41 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
