קֹהֶ֫לֶת
preacher
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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H6953 appears — 7 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Ecclesiastes 7 verses
- Ecclesiastes 1:1 קֹהֶ֣לֶת n c ms The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:
- Ecclesiastes 1:2 קֹהֶ֔לֶת n c ms "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
- Ecclesiastes 1:12 קֹהֶ֗לֶת n c ms I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
- Ecclesiastes 7:27 קֹהֶ֑לֶת n c ms Behold, this have I found, says the Preacher, one to another, to find out the scheme;
- Ecclesiastes 12:8 הַ/קּוֹהֶ֖לֶת ptcl def.art + n c ms Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; All is vanity!
- Ecclesiastes 12:9 קֹהֶ֖לֶת n c ms Further, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge. Yes, he pondered, sought out, and set in order many proverbs.
- Ecclesiastes 12:10 קֹהֶ֔לֶת n c ms The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words, and that which was written blamelessly, words of truth.
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.
קהלת — transliterated qôheleth — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “preacher.” More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Ecclesiastes. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 7 verses — uncommon. Debuting at Ecclesiastes 1:1, it then recurs through the corpus. Where the King James Version says “preacher,” newer translations reach for “teacher” (Berean Standard Bible) and “qoheleth” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6953 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 7 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ecclesiastes 7 verses 100%
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 7 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 100%
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: Preacher 6×
- American Standard Version: Preacher 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Teacher 7×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Qoheleth 7×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6953 across 7 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 H6953 across 7 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 H6953 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6953 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- collector (of sentences), preacher, public speaker, speaker in an assembly, Qoheleth
Word origin
(†קוֹהֶ֫לֶת Ec 12:8) n.m. Ec 1:2 collector (of sentences), or (AV RV) preacher (concionator Jer.: ἐκκλησιαστής 𝔊 (member of an ἐκκλησία); fem. either of office, Ges§ 122 r De Now Che, cf. סֹפֶרֶת Ezr 2:55; خَلِيفَةٌ, Khalif; Germ. Majestät, Excellenz; or as in Arabic with intensive force, one realizing the idea in its completeness (cf. جَمَّاعَةٌ great collector, بَاقِرَةٌ deep investigator (formed like קֹהֶלֶת), WAG i. § 233 R. c. v. DrIntr. 466; RVm great orator): hence either convener, or great collector (of sentences), cf. בַּעֲלֵי אֲסֻפּוֹת Ec 12:11, בקּשׁ ק׳ למצא דברי חפץ v 10 (but Kö Einl. 428 Drl.c. al. speaker in assembly, Plumptre debater));—ק׳ a king in Jerus., son of David, prob. = Sol., the pseudonym of book of Ec.: Ec 1:1, v 2 (appos. of אֲנִי), called חכם 12:9, cf. v 10; אמר ק׳ 1:2, אמר הק׳ 12:8 + 7:27 for MT אמרה ק׳.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קהל (qâhal) (H6950) — to assemble.
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.
קֹהֶלֶת
- (b. h.) pr. n. m. Koheleth, traditional surname of King Solomon. Koh. R. to I, 1 למה נקרא שמו ק׳ … בהִקָּהֵל וכ׳ why was his name Koheleth? Because his words were proclaimed in public meeting, as it is written (I Kings VIII, 1) &c.; a. e.—ק׳ (ספר) the Book of Koheleth, Ecclesiastes. B. Bath. 14ᵇ סידרן … ק׳ וכ׳ the order of the books of Hagiographa is: Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes &c. Ib. 15ᵃ משלי … ק׳ אנשי וכ׳ the men of the Great Assembly composed Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. Sabb. 30ᵇ בקשו … ספר ק׳ וכ׳ the scholars wanted to exclude from the canon (v. גָּנַז) the book of E., because its words contradict one another; Koh. R. to I, 3; a. fr. e.g. 1 Kings 8:1
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 6 distinct written forms H6953 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| קֹהֶ֔לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 1:2 | 2 |
| הַ/קּוֹהֶ֖לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 12:8 | 1 |
| קֹהֶ֑לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 7:27 | 1 |
| קֹהֶ֖לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 12:9 | 1 |
| קֹהֶ֗לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 1:12 | 1 |
| קֹהֶ֣לֶת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 1:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6953, 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
Shares the same root
- מקהל maqhêl H4721 assembly
- קהל qâhâl H6951 assembly
- קהלה qᵉhillâh H6952 congregation
- 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 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
