קְטַל
to slay
‘to slay’ 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 Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Qal Passive
- An archaic passive of the Qal, preserved in a few forms.
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
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”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Poal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Poal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal Passive, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal Passive, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (14%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (14%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 7 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H6992 appears — 6 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.
Daniel 6 verses
- Daniel 2:13 מִֽתְקַטְּלִ֑ין לְ/הִתְקְטָלָֽה Poal ptcp.act mp prep + Poal inf.cs So the decree went forth, and the wise men were to be slain; and they sought Daniel and his companions to be slain.
- Daniel 2:14 לְ/קַטָּלָ֔ה prep + Piel inf.cs Then Daniel returned answer with counsel and prudence to Arioch the captain of the king's guard, who was gone forth to kill the wise men of Babylon;
- Daniel 3:22 קַטִּ֣ל Piel pf 3ms Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
- Daniel 5:19 קָטֵ֗ל Qal ptcp.act ms and because of the greatness that he gave him, all the peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him: whom he would he killed, and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he raised up, and whom he would he put down.
- Daniel 5:30 קְטִ֕יל Qal Passive pf 3ms In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean King was slain.
- Daniel 7:11 קְטִילַ֤ת Qal Passive pf 3fs I saw at that time because of the voice of the great words which the horn spoke; I saw even until the animal was slain, and its body destroyed, and it was given to be burned with fire.
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.
קטל (qᵉṭal) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to slay.” Daniel dominates its distribution — 6 of 6 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 6 verses — uncommon. Debuting at Daniel 2:13, it then recurs through the corpus. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Pe‛îl, Pael, and more). For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6992 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 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 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 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: Be slain 1×, Men should be slain 1×, Slain 1×
- American Standard Version: Was slain 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Killed 2×, Was slain 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Was killed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6992 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6992 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H6992 across 7 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6992 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 Peil (the passive Aramaic stem), Pael (the intensive Aramaic stem, parallel to Piel), and Hithpeel (the reflexive or passive Aramaic stem).
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 3 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.
Pe‛îl
- be slain
Pael
- . slay
Hithpeel
- . be slain
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
Derived from קטל (qâṭal) (H6991) — to slay.
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.
קְטַל
- 1. to cut. Snh. 74ᵇ if a gentile says to a Jew, קְטוֹל אספסתא וכ׳ cut grass on the Sabbath and throw it to the cattle, or I shall kill thee, לִיקְטִיל ולא לִיקְטְלֵיה let him cut, that he (the gentile) may not kill him; שדי לנהרא ליקטליה ולא ליקטול but if he says to him, (cut grass and) throw it into the river, let him (the gentile) kill him, but he must not cut, because the gentile’s intention is merely to make him commit a sin; Yeb. 121ᵇ. Sabb. 95ᵃ רבך קָטֵיל … הוה thy teacher must have been a cutter of reeds in the marsh (an ignorant man); Snh. 33ᵃ אטו אנן קַטְלֵי וכ׳ are we reed-cutters?; a. e.
- 2. to kill. Targ. Gen. V, 8. Targ. Ex. IV, 23, sq.; a. fr.—Part. pass. קְטִיל, קְטִילָא; f. קְטִילָא; pl. קְטִילִין, קְטִילַיָּא; קְטִילָן. Targ. II Sam. XXIII, 8. Targ. Prov. VII, 26; a. fr.—Cant. R. to III, 4 אריא קטילא קְטִילַת thou hast killed a dead lion; Snh. 96ᵇ עמא ק׳ קַטְלַת thou hast killed a dead people, v. טְחַן. Ib. 74ᵃ אמר … זיל קַטְלֵיה … ואי לא קַטְלִינָא לן the governor of my place told me, go and kill that man, or I shall kill thee; א"ל לִיקְטְלוּךְ ולא תִיקְטוֹל וכ׳ said he (Raba) to him, let them kill thee, but do thou not kill; who tells thee that thy blood is redder &c.? Cant. R. to IV, 1 (expl. טרף, Gen. VIII, 11) קטיל וכ׳ killed, as we read (Gen. XXXVII, 33) ṭarof &c.; אמר לה אילו לא קְטַלְתִּינֵיה וכ׳ he (Noah) said to her (the dove), hadst thou not killed it, it would have become a big tree; Lev. R. s. 31 אילו לא קְטַלְתֵּיה; Yalk. Gen. 59; (Gen. R. s. 33 אילו שבקתה); a. fr. e.g. Genesis 8:11
- same, to Kill. Targ. Ex. XVII, 3. Targ. II Kings XVII, 26; a. fr.—Y. Taan. IV, 69ᵃ והוון רומים … ומְקַטְּלִין לון the Romans came and massacred them (the inhabitants); a. e.
- to be killed, put to death. Targ. Ex. XXI, 15. Targ. Prov. XXII, 13; a. fr.—Keth. 35ᵇ אע"ג דמִיקְּטִיל משלם although he is to be put to death, he must pay damages; 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 7 distinct written forms H6992 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לְ/הִתְקְטָלָֽה | Verb, Poal, Infinitive Construct | Daniel 2:13 | 1 |
| לְ/קַטָּלָ֔ה | Verb, Piel, Infinitive Construct | Daniel 2:14 | 1 |
| מִֽתְקַטְּלִ֑ין | Verb, Poal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 2:13 | 1 |
| קְטִ֕יל | Verb, Qal Passive, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Daniel 5:30 | 1 |
| קְטִילַ֤ת | Verb, Qal Passive, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Daniel 7:11 | 1 |
| קַטִּ֣ל | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Daniel 3:22 | 1 |
| קָטֵ֗ל | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 5:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6992, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
