קָהַל
to assemble
‘to assemble’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil 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”).
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
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”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H6950 appears in the Book of Ezekiel — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 38:7 הַ/נִּקְהָלִ֣ים ptcl def.art + Niphal ptcp.pass mp Be prepared, yes, prepare yourself, you, and all your companies who are assembled to you, and be a guard to them.
- Ezekiel 38:13 הִקְהַ֣לְתָּ Hiphil pf 2ms Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions of it, shall tell you, Are you come to take the spoil? have you assembled your company to take the prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take great spoil?
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.
קהל — transliterated qâhal — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to assemble.” Debuting at Exodus 32:1, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 39 verses in 14 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Its lexical range runs to 3 senses. From the same root come מקהל, קהל and קהלה. See the sense tree, 39-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6950 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 14 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 14 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #922
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 922 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 39 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 9 verses 23%
- Esther 5 verses 13%
- 2 Chronicles 4 verses 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 39 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 16 verses · 41%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 13 verses · 33%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 10 verses · 26%
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: Together 8×, Assembled 5×, Gather 5×
- American Standard Version: Assembled 9×, Gathered themselves together 5×, Assemble 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Assembled 11×, Assemble 5×, Gathered 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Assembled 15×, And 13×, Assemble 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6950 across 47 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H6950 across 47 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 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 H6950 across 38 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H6950 across 55 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 BDB
The 3 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.
- to assemble, gather
- (Niphal) to assemble
- (Hiphil) to summon an assembly
Word origin
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.
קָהַל
- to call.
- to assemble. Ber. 61ᵇ; Ab. Zar. 18ᵃ מַקְהִיל קהילות ברבים called public assemblies (to teach). Gen. R. s. 99 כשיַקְהִיל קרח וכ׳ (some ed. כשיַקְהֵל) when Korah will gather his followers for strife, my (Jacob’s) name shall not be joined with them. Yalk. Ex. 408 כדי שילמדו … להַקְהִיל וכ׳ that coming generations may learn from thee to assemble congregations every Sabbath; a. e.
- to be assembled. Gen. R. s. 98 בשעה שהן נִקְהָלִין על וכ׳ when they will be assembled against Moses in the party of Korah &c. Lev. R. s. 24 פרשה … בהִקָּהֵל וכ׳ this section (Lev. XIX) was proclaimed in full assembly (v. ib. 2), because &c. Koh. R. to I, 1, v. קֹהֶלֶת.
- same. Gen. R. s. 99 (ref. to יקהת, Gen. XLIX, 10) מי … מִתְקָהֲלִין עליו he around whom the nations will group themselves.—[Num. R. s. 12 מתקהלא, v. קָהָה.] e.g. Genesis 49:10
קָהָל
- preced.) gathering, congregation. Y. Hor. I, 46ᵃ bot. (ref. to Num. XV, 24, העדה) כל השבטים קרויין ק׳ all tribes together are called ḳahal; כל שבט … ק׳ every tribe for itself is called ḳ.; Bab. Hor. 3ᵃ כגון … רובו של ק׳ וכ׳ when six tribes have sinned, and they form the majority of the congregation (the entire people) &c. Ib. הני הוא דאיקרו ק׳ only they (the entire people) are called ḳ.—Kidd. 73ᵃ קְהַל ודאי a community of Israelites of undoubted legitimacy; קְ׳ ספק of doubtful legitimacy; Y. Yeb. VIII, 9ᵇ bot. קָ׳ ברור; קְ׳ ספק. Ib. [read:] ארבע קְהִילּוֹת אינון קְ׳ יי׳ קְ׳ כהנים וכ׳ four communities are meant by ‘the congregation of the Lord’ (Deut. XXIII, 2; 3; 4; 9): the community of priests, of Levites, of Israelites, and of proselytes. Mish. ib. VIII, 2 ואינן … אלא מלבא בק׳ and they are forbidden only to enter the congregation (to intermarry with Israelites); a. fr.—Pl., v. קְהִלָּה e.g. Numbers 15:24
קָהָל ²
- Targ. Num. XVI, 3. Ib. XX, 4; a. fr.—Kidd. 73ᵃ מחד קהל נפקו ed. (Rashi קהלא) the (laws concerning priests and Levites) are derived from one of the verses (Deut. XXIII, 3; 4; 9) in which ḳahal occurs.—Pl. קַהֲלֵי. Ib. הנהו נמי תרי ק׳ נינהו these (priests and Levites) are also two communities (requiring two verses with the word ḳahal in them); a. e. e.g. Deuteronomy 23:3
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 32 distinct written forms H6950 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6950, 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
- מקהל maqhêl H4721 assembly
- קהל qâhâl H6951 assembly
- קהלה qᵉhillâh H6952 congregation
- קהלת qôheleth H6953 preacher
- קלה qâlahh H7035 to assemble
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 → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 38 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 39 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
- Exodus 32:1
- Leviticus 8:3
- Numbers 1:18
- Deuteronomy 4:10
- Joshua 18:1
- Judges 20:1
- 2 Samuel 20:14
- 1 Kings 8:1
- 1 Chronicles 13:5
- 2 Chronicles 5:2
- Esther 8:11
- Job 11:10
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.
