צְרוּיָה
Zeruiah
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Zeruiah’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H6870 appears — 25 distinct verses across 4 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.
1 Samuel 1 verse
2 Samuel 14 verses
- 2 Samuel 2:13 צְרוּיָ֜ה n Proper Joab the son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out, and met them by the pool of Gibeon; and they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool.
- 2 Samuel 2:18 צְרוּיָ֔ה n Proper The three sons of Zeruiah were there, Joab, and Abishai, and Asahel: and Asahel was as light of foot as a wild gazelle.
- 2 Samuel 3:39 צְרוּיָ֖ה n Proper I am this day weak, though anointed king; and these men the sons of Zeruiah are too hard for me. May Yahweh reward the evil-doer according to his wickedness."
- 2 Samuel 8:16 צְרוּיָ֖ה n Proper Joab the son of Zeruiah was over the host; and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was recorder;
- 2 Samuel 14:1 צְרֻיָ֑ה n Proper Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king's heart was toward Absalom.
- 2 Samuel 16:9 צְרוּיָה֙ n Proper Then said Abishai the son of Zeruiah to the king, "Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Please let me go over and take off his head."
- 2 Samuel 16:10 צְרֻיָ֑ה n Proper The king said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? Because he curses, and because Yahweh has said to him, Curse David; who then shall say, Why have you done so?
- 2 Samuel 17:25 צְרוּיָ֖ה n Proper Absalom set Amasa over the host instead of Joab. Now Amasa was the son of a man, whose name was Ithra the Israelite, who went in to Abigail the daughter of Nahash, sister to Zeruiah, Joab's mother.
- 2 Samuel 18:2 צְרוּיָה֙ n Proper David sent forth the people, a third part under the hand of Joab, and a third part under the hand of Abishai the son of Zeruiah, Joab's brother, and a third part under the hand of Ittai the Gittite. The king said to the people, I will surely go forth with you myself also.
- 2 Samuel 19:21 צְרוּיָה֙ n Proper But Abishai the son of Zeruiah answered, Shall Shimei not be put to death for this, because he cursed Yahweh's anointed?
- 2 Samuel 19:22 צְרוּיָ֔ה n Proper David said, What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah, that you should this day be adversaries to me? shall there any man be put to death this day in Israel? for don't I know that I am this day king over Israel?
- 2 Samuel 21:17 צְרוּיָ֔ה n Proper But Abishai the son of Zeruiah helped him, and struck the Philistine, and killed him. Then the men of David swore to him, saying, You shall go no more out with us to battle, that you don't quench the lamp of Israel.
- 2 Samuel 23:18 צְרוּיָ֗ה n Proper Abishai, the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief of the three. He lifted up his spear against three hundred and killed them, and had a name among the three.
- 2 Samuel 23:37 צְרֻיָֽה n Proper Zelek the Ammonite, Naharai the Beerothite, armor bearers to Joab the son of Zeruiah,
1 Kings 3 verses
- 1 Kings 1:7 צְרוּיָ֔ה n Proper He conferred with Joab the son of Zeruiah, and with Abiathar the priest: and they following Adonijah helped him.
- 1 Kings 2:5 צְרוּיָ֗ה n Proper Moreover you know also what Joab the son of Zeruiah did to me, even what he did to the two captains of the hosts of Israel, to Abner the son of Ner, and to Amasa the son of Jether, whom he killed, and shed the blood of war in peace, and put the blood of war on his sash that was about his loins, and in his shoes that were on his feet.
- 1 Kings 2:22 צְרוּיָֽה n Proper King Solomon answered his mother, Why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.
1 Chronicles 7 verses
- 1 Chronicles 2:16 צְרוּיָ֣ה צְרוּיָ֗ה n Proper n Proper and their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail. The sons of Zeruiah: Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel, three.
- 1 Chronicles 11:6 צְרוּיָ֖ה n Proper David said, Whoever strikes the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain. Joab the son of Zeruiah went up first, and was made chief.
- 1 Chronicles 11:39 צְרוּיָֽה n Proper Zelek the Ammonite, Naharai the Berothite, the armor bearer of Joab the son of Zeruiah,
- 1 Chronicles 18:12 צְרוּיָ֗ה n Proper Moreover Abishai the son of Zeruiah struck of the Edomites in the Valley of Salt eighteen thousand.
- 1 Chronicles 18:15 צְרוּיָ֖ה n Proper Joab the son of Zeruiah was over the host; and Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilud was recorder;
- 1 Chronicles 26:28 צְרוּיָ֑ה n Proper All that Samuel the seer, and Saul the son of Kish, and Abner the son of Ner, and Joab the son of Zeruiah, had dedicated, whoever had dedicated anything, it was under the hand of Shelomoth, and of his brothers.
- 1 Chronicles 27:24 צְרוּיָ֜ה n Proper Joab the son of Zeruiah began to number, but didn't finish; and there came wrath for this on Israel; neither was the number put into the account in the chronicles of king David.
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.
צרויה (Tsᵉrûwyâh) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Zeruiah.” 2 Samuel dominates its distribution — 14 of 25 verses. Spanning 25 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in 1 Samuel 26:6. The sections below give every occurrence and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6870 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 →
- 25
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 25 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,251
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,251 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 25 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Samuel 14 verses 56%
- 1 Chronicles 7 verses 28%
- 1 Kings 3 verses 12%
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 25 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 72%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 28%
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: Zeruiah 25×
- American Standard Version: Zeruiah 23×, Ye sons of zeruiah 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Zeruiah 25×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Zeruiah 25×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6870 across 26 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 H6870 across 26 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 H6870 across 26 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 H6870 across 26 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 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.
- Zeruiah = "balsam"
- sister of David and mother of the 3 leading heroes of David's army - Abishai, Joab, and Asahel
Word origin
n.pr.f. Σαρουια: mother of Abishai, Joab and Asahel;—צ׳ 1 S 26:6 +, צְרֻיָה 2 S 14:1; 16:10; 23:37;—according to 1 Ch 2:16 a she was David’s sister; called אֵם יוֹאָב 2 S 17:25; elsewhere after cstr. בֶּן־ (בְּנֵי): בֶּן־צ׳ of Abishai 1 S 26:6; 2 S 16:9; 18:2; 19:22; 21:17; 1 Ch 18:12; of Joab 2 S 2:13; 8:16 = 1 Ch 18:15; 2 S 14:1; 23:18 and v 37 = 1 Ch 11:39; 1 K 1:7; 2:5, 22; 1 Ch 11:6; 26:28; 27:24; pl. of all three 2 S 2:18; 1 Ch 2:16; Abishai and Joab 2 S 3:39; 16:10; 19:23.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from צרי (tsᵉrîy) (H6875) — balm.
Forms in the corpus
The 10 distinct written forms H6870 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| צְרוּיָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 11:6 | 5 |
| צְרוּיָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 1:7 | 4 |
| צְרוּיָ֗ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:16 | 4 |
| צְרוּיָ֜ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 27:24 | 3 |
| צְרוּיָה֙ | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 16:9 | 3 |
| צְרֻיָ֑ה | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 14:1 | 2 |
| צְרוּיָֽה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 11:39 | 2 |
| צְרֻיָֽה | Noun, Proper | 2 Samuel 23:37 | 1 |
| צְרוּיָ֑ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 26:28 | 1 |
| צְרוּיָ֣ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 2:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6870, 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
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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Zeruiah). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Stricken of the Lord, David's sister, and the mother of Abishai, Joab, and Asahel (1 Chr. 2:16), who were the three leading heroes of David's army, and being his nephews, they were admitted to the closest companionship with him.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(balsam), the mother of the three leading heroes of David's army--Abishai, Joah and Asahel-- known as the "sons of Zeruiah." Of Zeruiah's husband there is no mention in the Bible. (B.C. before 1046.)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
pain or tribulation of the Lord
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 25 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 25 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.
