קָבַב
to curse
‘to curse’ is one of 2 main senses 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘curse’
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (33%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute 1 time (11%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6895 appears — 9 distinct verses across 2 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 8 verses
- Numbers 22:11 קָֽבָ/ה Qal impv 2ms + sfx h Behold, the people that is come out of Egypt, it covers the surface of the earth: now, come curse me them; peradventure I shall be able to fight against them, and shall drive them out.
- Numbers 22:17 קָֽבָ/ה Qal impv 2ms + sfx h for I will promote you to very great honor, and whatever you say to me I will do. Please come therefore, and curse this people for me.
- Numbers 23:8 קַבֹּ֖/ה Qal pf 3ms + sfx pers 3ms How shall I curse, whom God has not cursed? How shall I defy, whom Yahweh has not defied?
- Numbers 23:11 לָ/קֹ֤ב prep + Qal inf.cs Balak said to Balaam, What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and, behold, you have blessed them altogether.
- Numbers 23:13 וְ/קָבְ/נוֹ conj + Qal impv 2ms + sfx pers 3ms Balak said to him, Please come with me to another place, from whence you may see them; you shall see but the utmost part of them, and shall not see them all: and curse me them from there.
- Numbers 23:25 קֹ֖ב Qal inf.abs Balak said to Balaam, Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all.
- Numbers 23:27 וְ/קַבֹּ֥ת/וֹ conj + Qal wpf 2ms + sfx pers 3ms Balak said to Balaam, Come now, I will take you to another place; peradventure it will please God that you may curse me them from there.
- Numbers 24:10 לָ/קֹ֤ב prep + Qal inf.cs Balak's anger was kindled against Balaam, and he struck his hands together; and Balak said to Balaam, I called you to curse my enemies, and, behold, you have altogether blessed them these three times.
Job 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.
“to curse” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb קבב (qâbab). More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Numbers. It appears 9 verses across 2 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Scripture first uses it in Numbers 22:11. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. See the sense tree, 9-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6895 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
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 9 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 8 verses · 89%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 11%
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: Thee to curse 2×
- American Standard Version: All 1×, Come curse 1×, Hath not cursed 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Curse 3×, Curse them 2×, Put a curse 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Curse 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6895 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H6895 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6895 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H6895 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 1 sense 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.
Qal
- curse, c. acc. usually pers.: Pf. 3 ms. sf. קַבֹּה (Ges§ 58 d) Nu 23:8; 2 ms. sf. consec. וְקַבֹּתוֹ v 27; Impf. 3 ms. וַיִּקֹּב (Ges§ 67 g) Lv 24:11 (c. acc. אֶת־הַשֵּׁם); 2 ms. sf. תִּקֳּבֶנּוּ Nu 23:25 (+ Inf. abs.); 1 s. אֶקֹּב v 8 (obj. om.); וָאֶקּוֹב נָוֵהוּ Jb 5:3 (prob. corrupt; 𝔊 Du read וַיִּרְקַב, cf. Me Bi Siegf Beer; וַיִּפָּקֵד Bu; ויּוּקַב CheJQ July, 1897, 575; וַיִּבֹּק BevJPhil. xxvi. 308 (cf. Is 24:1, 3; Je 51:2; Na 2:3)); 3 mpl. sf. יִקְבֻהוּ Jb 3:8; Pr 11:26; 24:24; Imv. ms. קָֽבָה־לִּי (Ges§ 67 o Köi. 329 ff.) Nu 22:11, 17, sf. 3 ms. וְקָבְנוֹ־לִי (Ges§ 67 o) 23:13 (all JE; all + לִי as dat. comm., so also v 27 vid. Pf. supr.); Inf. abs. קֹב v 25 (+ Impf.); Inf. cstr. לָקֹב v 11; 24:10. e.g. Numbers 23:8
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
vb. utter a curse against, curse (cf. יקו[ב] Ecclus 41:7):—
— 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
Forms in the corpus
The 7 distinct written forms H6895 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לָ/קֹ֤ב | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Numbers 23:11 | 2 |
| קָֽבָ/ה | Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 22:11 | 2 |
| וְ/קַבֹּ֥ת/וֹ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 23:27 | 1 |
| וְ/קָבְ/נוֹ | Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 23:13 | 1 |
| וָ/אֶקּ֖וֹב | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Job 5:3 | 1 |
| קַבֹּ֖/ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Numbers 23:8 | 1 |
| קֹ֖ב | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute | Numbers 23:25 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6895, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
