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קַ֫יִן

spear

H7013 Strong's Hebrew
qayin Transliteration
/kah'-yin/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 1 appearance

Compare with another word →

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.

The Hebrew noun קין centers on the idea of “spear.” It occurs a mere 1 verse across Scripture. 2 Samuel dominates its distribution — 1 of 1 verses. Scripture uses it exactly once, at 2 Samuel 21:16. It clusters with קון, קינה and יקנעם under a shared root. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
spear
Modern gloss
spear
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H7013 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 →

1
distinct verses
The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
1 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
2 Samuel 21:16
only appearance
This word occurs only once, in 2 Samuel 21:16.
#6,101
by frequency
Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 1 · 100%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 0 · 0%

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 1 distinct verse.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 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).

BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.

  • King James Version: Spear 1×
  • American Standard Version: Spear 1×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Spear 1×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Spear 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H7013 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Spear” 1×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H7013 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Spear” 1×

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H7013 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Spear” 1×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H7013 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Spear” 1×

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.

קין I [m.] spear 𝔊 and most

קין II

  • 1. gent. (v. StaG i. 131 f. MeyEntstehung 115; cf. Arabic n.pr.fam. قَيْن; Nab. Sin. n.pr.m. et. f. קינו; tribe of smiths?);—tribe of Moses’ father-in-law Ju 4:11 (cf. קֵינִי 1:16), Καινα, 𝔊L Κειν; akin to Midian (Nu 10:29 P), settled among Amal. in S. of Canaan (v. קֵינִי); prophesied against by Balaam Nu 24:22 (קָ֑יִן; JE);—v. also קֵינִי. e.g. Judges 4:11
  • 2. loc. הַקַּ֫יִן, in S. Judah (a settlement of ii. ק׳ 1?);—Jos 15:57, [Ζακαν]αειμ, A [Ζανω] Ακειμ, 𝔊L [Ζανου] Ακεν; poss. = Ẏŭḳîn SE. from Hebron [RobBR ii. 85] (v. BuhlGeogr. 162 f. who, however, cp. קִינָה v 22). e.g. Joshua 15:57

קין III m. Cain, Καιν, eldest son of Adam and Eve (expl. Gn 4

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

I. n.[m.] spear 𝔊 and most;—sf. קֵינוֹ 2 S 21:16; קוֹבָעוֹ (cf. 1 S 17:38) Klo Bu HPS al.

III. n.pr.m. Cain, Καιν, eldest son of Adam and Eve (expl. Gn 4:1 from קָנָה acquire; but in fact = ii. ק׳, as heros eponymos, according to WeComp. 11 StaG 285 ff. BuUrg. 193 Holz Gn 50 f. especially StaZAW xiv (1894), 250 ff.; xv (1895), 157 ff., CheEncy. Bib. cain);—ק׳ Gn 4:1, 2, 3, 5(×2), 8(×2), 9, 13, 15(×2), 16, 17, קָ֑יִן v 6, 24, 25 (all J).

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from קון (qûwn) (H6969) — to lament.

Part of speech: Noun Masculine TWOT: 2015a


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.

קוּן

  • to arrange, order, plan (applied to art, cmp. חָרַשׁ; to music, v. קִינָה).
    • to arrange a song of lamentation (ḳinah, cmp. קשר הספד, v. הֶסְפֵּד). Gitt. 58ᵃ עליה ק׳ ירמיהו וכ׳ on her account Jeremiah sang &c. Ib. ועליהן קינה וכ׳ (corr. acc.; v. En Yaʿăḳob). Lam. R. introd. (R. Naḥman) התחיל … מְקוֹנֵן עליהם איכה Jeremiah began to sing Ekhah (Lam. I, 1) over them. Ib. (R. Pinḥas) הרי … מקונן עליכם קינות וכ׳ behold, Jeremiah will sing lamentations of seven alphabets (of) Ekhah over you. M. Kat. III, 9 אבל לא מְקוֹנְנוֹת but they (the lamenting women) must not sing dirges, v. קִינָה a. עִינּוּי I; a. fr. e.g. Lamentations 1:1

קַיִן

  • (b. h.) Cain, son of Adam. Snh. IV, 5 שכן מצינו בק׳ וכ׳ for so we find with reference to Cain when he had killed his brother &c. Ib. 37ᵇ מלמד שעשה ק׳ וכ׳ this use of the plural (דמי, Gen. IV, 10) shows that C. inflicted many wounds and bruises on his brother &c. Gen. R. s. 2 ובהו זה ק׳ וכ׳ ‘and void’ (Gen. I, 2), this refers to Cain who intended to reduce the world to waste and voidness; a. v. fr. e.g. Genesis 4:10

*קִין

  • , Pa. קַיֵּין (v. קוּן) to arrange, shape. Gen. R. s. 23 קַיְּנָן קנתורין Ar., v. קִינְטוֹר.

קתליכוס

  • , v. קָתוֹלִיקוֹס

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.


Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7013, 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 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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