קַל
swift
also: light, fleet fuller range ↓
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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H7031 appears in the Book of Jeremiah — 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.
Jeremiah
- Jeremiah 2:23 קַלָּ֖ה adj Adjective fs How can you say, I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals? see your way in the valley, know what you have done: [you are] a swift dromedary traversing her ways;
- Jeremiah 46:6 הַ/קַּ֔ל ptcl def.art + Adjective Adjective ms Don't let the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; in the north by the river Euphrates have they stumbled and fallen.
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.
קל — transliterated qal — is a Hebrew adjective carrying the sense “swift.” Debuting at 2 Samuel 2:18, it then recurs through the corpus. With 13 verses in 8 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Isaiah (31% of all occurrences). BDB distinguishes 3 senses; alongside “swift” it spans “light” and “fleet”. 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 H7031 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 →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 13 occurrences in the concordance →
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 13 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 10 verses · 77%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 23%
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 2 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†: Swift 3×, Swiftly 2×
- American Standard Version†: Swift 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Swift 5×, Fleet 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Swift 6×, Swiftly 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7031 across 13† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7031 across 13† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H7031 across 13† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H7031 across 13† 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 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.
- swift, light, fleet
- swift
- one who is swift
Word origin
adj. light, swift, fleet;—ms. ק׳ Am 2:15 +, קָ֑ל v 14; fs. קַלָּה Je 2:23; pl. קַלִּים Is 18:2 +;—קַל בְּרַגְלָיו light with his feet Am 2:15 2 S 2:18; ק׳ alone, swift, messengers Is 18:2, pursuers La 4:19 (מִן comp.), camel Je 2:23, cloud Is 19:1; of swift vanishing of wicked Jb 24:18 (Bu קַלּוּ for קַל הוּא); as subst. Am 2:14; Je 46:6; Ec 9:11, = swift (horse) Is 30:16; קַל as adv., swiftly (+ מְהֵרָה) Is 5:26; Jo 4:4.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קלל (qâlal) (H7043) — to be light.
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.
קַל I
- to be light, v. קָלַל.
קַל II
- preced.) light;
- 1. unimportant, of minor value; easy to achieve.—קל וחומר, v. חוֹמֶר I. Ḥull. XII, 5 מצוה ק׳ שהיא כאיסר a slight religious act which is performed at a sacrifice of one Isar. Y. Kidd. I, 61ᵇ bot. השוה הכתוב מצוה ק׳ שבקַלּוֹת וכ׳ the Bible put the lightest of the light acts (Deut. XXII, 7) on the same level with the most serious (Ex. XX, 12). Tosef. Yoma V (IV), 4 מאכילין אותו הקל הקל you must give him to eat (of forbidden things on hand) that which is of comparatively minor import; a. fr.—Pl. קַלִּים, קַלִּין; קַלּוֹת.—קלים וחמורים, v. חוֹמֶר I.—Dem. I, 1 הק׳ שבדמאי those fruits with which, in cases of doubt as to tithes (v. דְּמַאי), the law deals most leniently. Yoma VIII, 8 על עבירות ק׳ for minor transgressions (to which the lowest penalty is attached); ib. 85ᵇ אלו הן ק׳ וכ׳ these are the minor transgressions: omission of a positive command &c. (v. עָשָׂה); Tosef. ib. V (IV), 5. R. Hash. 25ᵇ, a. e. שלשה קַלֵּי עולם the three worthless (chiefs) in Israel’s history, opp. חמורי עולם. Ib. אפי׳ קל שבק׳ וכ׳ (not קלין) even the most worthless of worthless men, if once appointed a leader, should be respected like the strongest &c.; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 22:7
- 2. lowly, poor.—Pl. as ab. Arakh. 24ᵃ שלא ישהא מרגלית לק׳ one must not delay the valuation of a jewel dedicated for its value by poor men (for the sake of taking it to a large town where a higher price can be obtained, but it must go by its local value); ib. 18ᵃ מרגלית לק׳ as to local valuation.
- 3. quick. Ab. III, 12, v. נוֹחַ II. Ib. V, 20 הוי … קל כנשר וכ׳ be … swift as an eagle, and run like a deer to do the will of thy Father in heaven. Sabb. VIII, 5 ביצה ק׳ שבבצים the lightest of eggs; expl. ib. 80ᵇ ק׳ לבשל quick to boil; Y. ib. VIII, 11ᵇ top. Gen. R. s. 16, v. חַד I. Keth. 112ᵃ (ref. to Jer. III, 19 נחלת צבי) מה צבי זה קל … ק׳ לבשל וכ׳ as the deer is the swiftest of beasts, so the land of Israel is the swiftest of all lands to ripen its fruits. Ex. R. s. 19, a. fr. לשעה קלה after a short time; a. fr.—Pl. as ab. Gen. R. l. c.; a. e. e.g. Jeremiah 3:19
קַל III
- c. = h. קוֹל, voice, sound; rumor. Targ. Ez. XI, 13. Targ. Gen. XXVII, 22. Targ. Ps. XCII, 12; a. fr.—M. Kat. 18ᵇ ק׳ דלא פסיק, v. פְּסַק. B. Bath. 5ᵃ רמא ביה ק׳ raised his voice against him (rebuked him). Y. Kil. IX, 32ᵇ top [read:] ואזל ק׳ דקרעין לגופפתה and the sound of (the lamentations at) the rending of garments went as far as Gof’fatha; Y. Keth. XII, 35ᵃ ואזיל קָלָה לקרעין וכ׳ (corr. acc.); a. fr.—בת ק׳, ברת ק׳ = h. בת קול (v. בַּת I) divine voice. Targ. Y. Gen. XXXVIII, 26; a. e.—Snh. 96ᵇ נפקת בת ק׳ (not נפקא ק׳) a divine voice came forth; a. fr.—Pl. קָלַיָּא, קָלִין, קָלֵי. Targ. Ex. IX, 23. Ib. 29; a. fr.—Targ. Ps. XCIII, 4 קָלָן.—B. Mets. 85ᵃ מעבר ליה קָלֵיה לקָלַיְהוּ the sound of his cry (in pain) drowned their (the beasts’) voices. R. Hash. 27ᵃ תרי ק׳ two simultaneous (or immediately consecutive) sounds; a. e.
קָל II
- (preced.) Ḳal (Voice), name of the genius of Nebuchadnezzar. Ex. R. s. 21 (ref. to Dan. IV, 28). e.g. Daniel 4:28
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 11 distinct written forms H7031 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| קַ֣ל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Samuel 2:18 | 3 |
| הַ/קַּ֔ל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 46:6 | 1 |
| וְ/קַ֥ל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Amos 2:15 | 1 |
| לַ/קַּלִּ֨ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ecclesiastes 9:11 | 1 |
| מִ/קָּ֔ל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Amos 2:14 | 1 |
| קַ֥ל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 5:26 | 1 |
| קַֽל | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 24:18 | 1 |
| קַל֙ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 19:1 | 1 |
| קַלִּ֗ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 18:2 | 1 |
| קַלִּ֤ים | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Lamentations 4:19 | 1 |
| קַלָּ֖ה | Adjective, Adjective, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 2:23 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7031, 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 6 — 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 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 13 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
- 2 Samuel 2:18
- Job 24:18
- Ecclesiastes 9:11
- Isaiah 5:26
- Jeremiah 2:23
- Lamentations 4:19
- Joel 3:4
- Amos 2:14
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.
