צׇרְעָה
Zorah
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Zorah’ 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 H6881 appears — 10 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.
Joshua 2 verses
Judges 6 verses
- Judges 13:2 מִ/צָּרְעָ֛ה prep + n Proper There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and didn't bear.
- Judges 13:25 צָרְעָ֖ה n Proper The Spirit of Yahweh began to move him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
- Judges 16:31 צָרְעָה֙ n Proper Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burying-place of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years.
- Judges 18:2 מִ/צָּרְעָ֣ה prep + n Proper The children of Dan sent of their family five men from their whole number, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said to them, Go, search the land. They came to the hill-country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.
- Judges 18:8 צָרְעָ֖ה n Proper They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, What [say] you?
- Judges 18:11 מִ/צָּרְעָ֖ה prep + n Proper There set forth from there of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men girt with weapons of war.
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Nehemiah 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.
צרעה — transliterated Tsorʻâh — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Zorah.” More than half of its appearances fall in Judges. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 10 verses — uncommon. Debuting at Joshua 15:33, it then recurs through the corpus. See 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6881 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Judges 6 verses 60%
- Joshua 2 verses 20%
- 2 Chronicles 1 verse 10%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 80%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 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: Zorah 5×, Between zorah 2×
- American Standard Version: Zorah 7×, Between zorah 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Zorah 9×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Zorah 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6881 across 10 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 H6881 across 10 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 H6881 across 10 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 H6881 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
- Zareah or Zoreah or Zorah = "hornet"
- a town in Dan, residence of Manoah and the home town of Samson
Word origin
n.pr.loc. Σαραα, etc. (cf. also LagBN 85), in the Shephelah of Judah (TelAm. Ṣarḫa, named with Aialuna, Ajalon);—Jos 15:33, but assigned to Dan 19:41; Ju 13:2, 25; 16:31; 18:2, 8, 11; 2 Ch 11:10 Ne 11:29; mod. Ṣarʿa, 15 miles W. from Jerus., cf. GASmGeogr. 218 BuhlGeogr. 195.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from צרעה (tsirʻâh) (H6880) — hornets.
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.
צִרְעָה
- preced. wds.) [plague,] hornet (collect. noun). Y. Sabb. XIV, beg. 14ᵃ מותר להרוג את הצ׳ וכ׳ you may kill hornets on the Sabbath (because they are dangerous to life). Ib.; Bab. Sabb. 121ᵇ צ׳ שבנינוה, v. נִינְוֵה. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXVIII, 45 וכן הצ׳ בימי וכ׳ the same was the case with the plague of hornets in Joshua’s days; Yalk. Sam. 102; a. e.—[Yalk. Lev. 537 יכול אף הצ׳, read: הצִיפָּה.]—Pl. צִרְעִים, צִרְעִין, צִרְעוֹת. Yalk. Sam. l. c. והיו שתי צ׳ קורעות וכ׳ two hornets split the stem &c.; Tanḥ. Mishp. 18 צִרְעָיוֹת; ed. Bub. 12 צרעות. Makhsh. VI, 4 דבש צ׳ hornets’ honey. Sot. 36ᵃ שתי צ׳ הואי וכ׳ there were two plagues of hornets, one in Moses’ days, and one in Joshua’s; 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 8 distinct written forms H6881 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| צָרְעָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 13:25 | 2 |
| צָרְעָה֙ | Noun, Proper | 2 Chronicles 11:10 | 2 |
| וְ/צָרְעָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:33 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/צָרְעָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 11:29 | 1 |
| מִ/צָּרְעָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 18:11 | 1 |
| מִ/צָּרְעָ֛ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 13:2 | 1 |
| מִ/צָּרְעָ֣ה | Noun, Proper | Judges 18:2 | 1 |
| צָרְעָ֥ה | Noun, Proper | Joshua 19:41 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6881, 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 (Zorah). 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
Place of wasps, a town in the low country of Judah, afterwards given to Dan (Josh. 19:41; Judg. 18:2), probably the same as Zoreah (Josh. 15:33). This was Samson's birthplace (Judg. 13:2, 25), and near it he found a grave (16:31). It was situated on the crest of a hill overlooking the valley of Sorek, and was fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chr. 11:10). It has been identified with Sur'ah, in the Wady Surar, 8 miles west of Jerusalem. It is noticed on monuments in the fifteenth century B.C. as attacked by the Abiri or Hebrews.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(hornet), a town in the allotment of the tribe of Dan, (Joshua 19:41) It is previously mentioned ch. (Joshua 15:33) in the catalogue of Judah, among the places in the district of the Shefelah (Authorized Version "Zoreah"), It was the residence of Manoah and the native place of Samson. It is mentioned among the places fortified by Rehoboam. (2 Chronicles 11:10) It is perhaps identical with the modern village of Sur'ah .
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
leprosy; scab; hornet
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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.
