קָבַר
to bury
‘to bury’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal 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”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘bury’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
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”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 distinct verse where H6912 appears in the Pual stem, across 1 book. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Genesis 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.
At its core, קבר (qâbar) means “to bury.” The verb spans 4 stems, from Qal to Niphal. Spanning 122 verses in 18 books, it ranks among the common words of the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Genesis 15:15. Sharing its root, it stands alongside קבורה and קבר. Dig into 122-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6912 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 →
- 122
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 122 distinct verses.
- 18 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 18 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #339
- by frequency
- Top 500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 339 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 122 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 122 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 72 verses · 59%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 29 verses · 24%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 21 verses · 17%
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: They buried 26×, Was buried 26×, Buried 20×
- American Standard Version: They buried 25×, Was buried 24×, Buried 15×
- Berean Standard Bible: Was buried 38×, Bury 13×, They buried 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: They buried 22×, He was buried 20×, They buried him 14×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6912 across 133 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 32 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 H6912 across 133 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 43 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6912 across 130 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 23 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6912 across 145 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 26 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
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 4 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.
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. ק׳ Gn 23:19; 2 ms. sf. consec. וּקְבַרִתַּנְי 47:30, etc.; Impf. 3 ms. וַיִּקְבֹּר Dt 34:6; 2 K 21:26, etc.; Imv. קְבֹר Gn 23:6 +, etc.; Inf. abs. קָבוֹר Dt 21:23; cstr. לִקְבּוֹר Je 19:11 +, etc.; Pt. act. קֹבֵר 2 K 9:10 +, etc.; pass. קָבוּר 1 K 13:31, pl. קְבֻרִים Ec 8:10 bury, acc. pers., bones, etc., usually c. ב loc., 2 S 2:32; 1 K 13:31(×2) Gn 23:6 Jos 24:30, 32(×2) Ju 2:9 + 33 times; c. בֵּיתוֹ loc. 2 Ch 33:20 (בְּגַן־בֵּיתוֹ ‖ 2 K 21:18, also בְּבֵיתוֹ 1 S 25:1; 1 K 2:34); c. שָׁם Nu 11:34, תַּחַת 1 S 31:13 = 1 Ch 10:12; pregn. c. אֶל loc. Gn 23:19; 25:9; Ez 39:15; אֶל־אֲבֹתָ֑י Gn 49:29; cf. עִם־אֲבוֹתָיו 2 K 12:22; 15:7; 2 Ch 25:28; 26:23 (v. also Niph., and תָּבוֹא אֶל־אֲבֹתֶיךָ Gn 15:15); c. שָׁ֫מָּה Gn 23:13; 49:31(×3); 50:5; c. acc. pers. alone 2 S 2:4, 5 + 22 times; + מִלְּפָנַי Gn 23:4, 8; pass. Ec 8:10; acc. om. 2 K 9:10 + 3 times + (c. ב) 2 S 4:12. e.g. Genesis 23:19
Niphal
- Impf. 3 ms. יִקָּבֵר Je 22:19, etc.;—be buried Gn 15:15 Je 8:2; 16:4, 6; 25:33 (+ אסף), as read perhaps Ez 29:5 for תִּקָּבֵץ (+ id.); קְבֻרַת חֲמוֹר יִקּ׳ Je 22:19; usually c. ב loc. Gn 35:19 Ju 8:32 + 6 times Ju, 2 S 17:23; 1 K 2:10, 34 + 16 times K Ch (+ עִם־אֲבוֹתַיו 1 K 14:31; 15:24 + 6 times; עִם־מַלְכֵי יִשְׂר׳ 2 K 13:13; 14:16); c. שָׁם Nu 20:1 + 3 times; c. תַּחַת, מִתַּחַת Gn 35:8. e.g. Jeremiah 22:19
Piel
- bury (in masses), c. acc.: Impf. 3 fs. sf. תְּקַבְּרֵם Ho 9:6; Inf. cstr. לְקַבֵּר 1 K 11:15; Pt. pl. מְקַבְרִים Nu 33:4 Ez 39:14; as n. intens., of office, burier, sg. מְקַבֵּר Je 14:16, pl. הַמּ׳ Ez 39:15. e.g. Hosea 9:6
Pual
- Pf. 3 ms. שָׁ֫מַּה קֻבַּר אַבְרָהָם Gn 25:10. e.g. Genesis 25:10
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. bury (NH id.; Ph. קבר, bury, קבר tomb; Arabic قَبَرَ, Assyrian ḳibîru, Aramaic קְבַר, ܩܒܰܪ, Nab. קבר, all bury; Palm. Nab. קברא tomb, so Sab. קבר HomChrest. 126 Liḥy. קבר bury; DHMEpigr. Denkm. No. 35, 2, 3, cf. מקבר(הם) burial-place CISiv, No. 20, 1, 2, 4);—
— 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.
קָבַר
- (b. h.) [to cave out; to arch,] to bury. Snh. 52ᵃ הנראה מי קוֹבֵר את מי (Ms. M. הא נראה) we shall see, which will cover which (which will die first). Sot. 14ᵃ הקב"ה ק׳ … קְבוֹר מתים the Lord buried the dead, … thou, too, bury the dead (consider attending to the dead a religious duty). Nidd. 24ᵇ קובר מתים הייתי I used to be a grave-digger. B. Bath. 15ᵇ לא … לִקְבּוֹר וכ׳ he had no place where to bury Sarah; Ex. R. s. 6. Treat. S’maḥ. ch. XII קָבְרֵנִי תחלה וכ׳ first bury me in the valley, and then collect my bones. Ib. קִבְרוּ אותי תחת וכ׳ bury me at the feet of my father. Sabb. 114ᵃ אל תִּקְבְּרוּנִי לא וכ׳ bury me neither in white clothes nor in black &c.; a. fr.—Part. pass. קָבוּר; f. קְבוּרָה. Keth. 111ᵃ כל הק׳ בא"י כאילו ק׳ וכ׳ he that is buried in Palestine is as though buried under the altar. Ber. 18ᵇ שאני ק׳ במחצלת וכ׳ for I am buried in a reed mat. Gitt. 56ᵇ (ref. to Koh. VIII, 10) קְבוּרִים ממש וכ׳ it really means buried things, for even hidden things were discovered by them, v. קָבַץ; a. fr. e.g. Ecclesiastes 8:10
- to be buried. Snh. 47ᵃ לא נספד ולא נ׳ if a body has been neither lamented over (v. סָפַד) nor buried. Ib.ᵇ לא יִקָּבֵר בו וכ׳ he must never be buried in that place; a. fr.
- to bury (one after the other). Ib. 113ᵃ היה מְקַבֵּר והולך וכ׳ he successively buried (his children) beginning with Abiham &c.
קְבַר
- 1. same, to bury. Targ. Gen. XXIII, 4. Targ. Ps. LXXIX, 3; a. fr.—Part. pass. קְבִיר; f. קְבִירָא &c. Targ. O. Deut. XXXIII, 21 (Y. קָבוּר, Hebr. form). Targ. Ruth I, 17. Targ. Job XXVII, 15; a. fr.—Snh. 46ᵇ לא בעינא דלִיקְבְּרוּהָ וכ׳ I do not want them to bury this man (I want not to be buried when I am dead). Ib. מדקַבְרֵיה וכ׳ because the Lord buried Moses. Sabb. 151ᵇ וקביר, v. חֲפִיר; a. fr.—Ab. Zar. 38ᵃ וק׳ ביה ישראל וכ׳ after an Israelite had hidden a pumpkin in it (the oven).
- 2. (of tide) to overflow, inundate. Gen. R. s. 13; Koh. R. to I, 7 דמרבי וקָבֵר which grows and floods, v. קַבְרִיאֵל.
- as preced. Pi. Targ. Num. XXXIII, 4; a. e.
- to be buried. Targ. Gen. XV, 15. Targ. Jer. VIII, 2; a. fr.—Snh. l. c. מדאִיקְּבוּר צדיקי since righteous men are buried (it would seem that burial is not for the sake of purging the dead from sin). Ib. הנך נמי לִיקַּבְּרוּ וכ׳ they (the other members of the house of Jeroboam) ought also to have been buried for the sake of atonement. Ib. 104ᵃ קברה ולא אִיקְבְּרָא וכ׳ he buried it (Joiakim’s skull), and it would not remain under ground, buried it again &c.; a. e.
קֶבֶר
- preced.) grave. Snh. 47ᵇ ק׳ חדש a fresh grave (that has been dug but not used). Ib. ק׳ בנין a grave on which something has been built, i.e. an arched grave (not flat). Ib. שלשה קברות הן ק׳ הנמצא there are three kinds of graves (with reference to law): a grave that has been discovered (a fresh grave in which somebody was buried without the consent of the owner of the ground); ק׳ הידוע a known grave (in which one was buried with the owner’s consent); ק׳ המזיק את הרבים a grave which interferes with public comfort (made in a thoroughfare). Y. Naz. IX, 57ᵈ top., v. תְּהוֹם. Ohol. XVII, 1 החורש את הק׳ if one passes the plough over a grave. Koh. R. to VII, 8 וכיון שקברוהו … את קִבְרוֹ when they had buried him (Elisha-Aḥer), a fire came to burn his grave; a. v. fr.—Pl. קְבָרִים, קְבָרוֹת. Taan. 25ᵇ תקנתם ק׳ וכ׳ have you prepared graves for yourselves (are you ready to die)? Ib. 22ᵇ שלא יהא בתיהם קִבְרֵיהֶם that their houses may not become their graves (that their dwellings may not fall down from excessive rains); Y. Yoma V, 42ᶜ top שלא יעשו … קִבְרֵיהֶן. Ḥag. 22ᵇ נשתטח על קִבְרֵי וכ׳ he prostrated himself over the graves of &c. Yeb. 47ᵇ שני ק׳ נמסרו וכ׳ the court has charge of two burial places (for culprits). Snh. VI, 5 ולא היו קוברין אותו בקִבְרוֹת אבותיו they did not bury him (the culprit) in the burial place of their ancestors; a. fr.—בֵּית הקברות (abbr. בה"ק) cemetery; pl. בָּתֵּי ק׳. Ber. 18ᵇ הלך ולן בב"הק he went and spent the night in the cemetery. Snh. l. c. (46ᵇ) שני בתי ק׳ וכ׳ two burial grounds were at the disposal of the courts, one for those put to death by the sword, and one &c.; a. fr.—Trnsf. uterus (containing an embryo). Nidd. 21ᵃ באיפשר לפתיחת הק׳ וכ׳ they differ as to whether the uterus can open (to pass the embryo) without discharging blood. Sabb. 129ᵃ חיה כל זמן שהק׳ פתוח וכ׳ for a woman in confinement you must violate the Sabbath laws as long as the uterus is open, whether she says that she needs it or that she needs it not. Ib. מאימתי פתיחת הק׳ when does the opening of the womb begin (in regard to Sabbath laws)?; עד מתי … הק׳ how long is it considered open? Ohol. VII, 4 אין לנפלים פ׳ הק׳ וכ׳ in the case of abortions the laws of levitical cleanness connected with the opening of the womb do not apply, unless &c., v. פִּיקָא I; Tosef. ib. VIII, 8; a. fr.
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 82 distinct written forms H6912 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 22 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6912, 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 116 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 122 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
- Genesis 15:15
- Numbers 11:34
- Deuteronomy 10:6
- Joshua 24:30
- Judges 2:9
- Ruth 1:17
- 1 Samuel 25:1
- 2 Samuel 2:4
- 1 Kings 2:10
- 2 Kings 8:24
- 1 Chronicles 10:12
- 2 Chronicles 9:31
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.
