אֹבֶן
wheel
‘wheel’ is one of 3 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
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
- Dual
- Exactly two — for natural pairs and some measures of time.
Every verse where H70 appears — 2 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Jeremiah 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.
אבן (ʼôben) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “wheel.” A scarce word — 2 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. It clusters heavily in Exodus, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. It first appears in Exodus 1:16. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. 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 H70 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 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 2 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 50%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 50%
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: Stools 1×, Wheels 1×
- American Standard Version: Birth-stool 1×, Wheels 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Birthstools 1×, Wheel 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Birth stool 1×, Wheels 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H70 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H70 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H70 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H70 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 2 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.
- 1. potter’s wheel
- 2. prob. bearing-stool, midwife’s stool
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
[ אֹבֶן ] n.[m.] wheel, disc.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אבן (ʼeben) (H68) — stone.
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.
אֶבֶן
- , v. Ges. H. Dict. s. v.) stone. Sabb. 10ᵃ; Pes. 12ᵇ כזורק א׳ וכ׳ like throwing a stone into a leather bottle (has no effect, or is indigestible). Num. R. s. 22 (prov.) into a well out of which you drank אל תזרוק בו א׳ cast no stone.—א׳ טובה jewel. B. Bath. 16ᵇ; a. fr. Pl. אֲבָנִים, const. אַבְנֵי. Gen. R. s. 68 שנים עשרה א׳. Ib. אם מתאחות הן שלשה א׳ (read שלש) if these three stones shall grow into one; a. fr.
- Stone Chamber, name of a Temple compartment. Parah III, 1.—א׳ גליון, v. אָוֶן.—א׳ הטועים (א׳ טועין, א׳ טוען, v. טָעָה) Stone of Losers (Claims), a place in Jerusalem where lost and found things were deposited and claimed. Taan. III, 8; Y. ib. 66ᵈ bot.; B. Mets. 28ᵇ—א׳ המבר or א׳ המקח auction place (for slaves). Sifré Deut. 26. Sifra B’har ch. VII, s. 6. Yalk. Lev. 667 א׳ הלקח.—א׳ מסמא a stone used for closing a pit etc. Nidd. 69ᵇ בא׳ מ׳ the corpse was put on a closing (immovable) stone; a. e.—קבועה א׳ a stone rooted in the ground, opp. תלושה. Y. Sotah IX, 23ᶜ top.—אבני השדה v. אדני.—שׁוֹאֶבֶת א׳ magnetic stone, load-stone. Snh. 107ᵇ; a. e.—א׳ הַשָּׁעוֹת stone-dial, Kel. XII, 4; a. e.—א׳ שְׁתִיָּה foundation stone, stone Sh’thiya which in the second Temple occupied the place of the Holy Arc. Yoma V, 2 (3); v. Ib. a. l.—אבנים תּוֹשָׁבוֹת immigrant stones, i.e. stones brought over from another ground. Tosef. Shebi. III, 4; cmp. Shebi. III, 7 a. Y. Ib. a. l.—א׳ תלושה v. sup. א׳ קבועה.—א׳ תקומה preserving stone, a stone believed to protect against abortion. Sabb. 66ᵇ.—[For other combinations see respective determinants.]
אֶבֶן ²
- Targ. Gen. XXVIII, 18; a. fr.—Pl. אַבְנַיָּא, אַבְנֵי, אַבְנִין. Targ. Ex. XXVIII, 11; a. fr. Lev. R. s. 16; a. e.—א׳ דאכפא weight-stones, to prevent the sheaves being blown away. B. Bath. 69ᵃ.—א׳ דכוחלא black marble stone. Kidd. 12ᵃ. [Targ. Prov. XXIII, 28, read with Ms. Luzz. וצאדא בניא שברי and captures foolish sons.] [Y. B. Bath. II, 13ᶜ … דיין אבן corrupt a. defective.]
אֹבֶן
- , only in Du. אָבְנַיִם (b. h.,
- 1. the potter’s turning implement.
- 2. the passage of the embryo, vagina. Ex. R. s. 1 (etym.) מקום שהולד נפנה בו (some ed. נקנה incorr.) where the child turns (to come to light). [Oth. etym. v. ibid. a. Sot. 11ᵇ.]
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 2 distinct written forms H70 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הָ/אָבְנָ֑יִם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Dual, Absolute | Exodus 1:16 | 1 |
| הָ/אָבְנָֽיִם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Dual, Absolute | Jeremiah 18:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H70, 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
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 5 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
