קָלַע
to sling
‘to sling’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
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.
Number
- Singular
- One.
2 distinct verses where H7049 appears in the Piel stem, across 1 book. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
1 Samuel 2 verses
- 1 Samuel 17:49 וַ/יְקַלַּ֔ע conj + Piel wimpf 3ms David put his hand in his bag, and took there a stone, and slang it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead; and the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth.
- 1 Samuel 25:29 יְקַלְּעֶ֔/נָּה Piel impf 3ms + sfx pers 3fs Though men be risen up to pursue you, and to seek your soul, yet the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with Yahweh your God; and the souls of your enemies, them shall he sling out, as from the hollow of a sling.
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.
קלע (qâlaʻ) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to sling.” Debuting at Judges 20:16, it then recurs through the corpus. With 7 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in 1 Kings, which alone accounts for 43% of its uses. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Qal and Piel. 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 H7049 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.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 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 →
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.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 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).
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†: He carved 3×
- American Standard Version†: He carved 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: He carved 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: He carved 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7049 across 7† 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7049 across 7† 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 H7049 across 7† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7049 across 8† 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.
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.
קלע I
Qal
- Pt. קֹלֵעַ בָּאֶבֶן אֶל־ Ju 20:16 one slinging (with) a stone at a hair; קוֹ׳ c. acc. pers. Je 10:18 I will sling forth the inhabitants. e.g. Judges 20:16
Piel
- Impf. 3 ms. וַיִקַלַּע 1 S 17:49 and he slang (sc. the stone); sf. יְקַלְּעֶנָּה he shall sling away (life of enemy). e.g. 1 Samuel 17:49
קלע II carve
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. ק׳: c. 2 acc., carve walls with, 1 K 6:29; c. acc. cogn. + עַל v 32; c. acc. of thing carved v 35. e.g. 1 Kings 6:29
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
vb. sling, hurl forth (Thes cp. Arabic قَلِعَ sit insecurely (v. also Frä 224, Socin in BuhlLex 13), waver, whence قِلْعٌ sail (loan-wd. Fräl.c.), J.Aram קַלְעָא id., BH NH קֶלַע curtain; thence hurl, sling; but this perhaps denom. (Socinl.c.) from قُلَّاعَةٌ loosened clod, cf. Syriac ܩܽܘܠܳܥܳܐ id. (Nö in Fräl.c.); Arabic مِقْلَعٌ sling, Ethiopic መቅልዕ: id.; 𝔗 קְלַע vb. sling, Syriac n. ܩܶܠܥܳܐ sling);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
קָלַע I
- (b. h.) [to swing,] to cast, sling.
- same. Sabb. 152ᵇ ומְקַלְּעִין נִשְׁמָתָן זה לזה and they (the angels) cast their (the sinners’) souls to one another (like washers) (with ref. to I Sam. XXV, 29, v. זוּם); Yalk. Sam. 134. e.g. 1 Samuel 25:29
קְלַע
- Af. אַקְלַע same. Targ. I Sam. XVII, 49. Targ. Y. Ex. X, 19 אקלע Ar. (ed. טלק).
- to be thrown; to happen to come, happen to fall (on a certain day). Ḥull. 110ᵃ א׳ לסורא וכ׳ happened to come to Sura on the eve of &c. Ib. אִיקְלְעוּ לבי וכ׳ happened to come to the house (were the guests) of &c. Pes. 46ᵇ הואיל ומִיקְלְעֵי וכ׳ since guests may happen to come to him. Ned. 8ᵃ עד דמִקְלְעֵי ליה וכ׳ until ten persons … pass by him. R. Hash. 20ᵃ דא׳ יום שלשים וכ׳ if the thirtieth day happens to fall on a Sabbath. Ber. 53ᵇ אי מִקְּלַע לי ממילא if I happen to get it. Sabb. 117ᵇ כי מיקלע להו וכ׳ if they by chance had bread that had been used for an ʿErub (עֵירוּב); a. fr.
קָלַע II
- to twist, plait; [b. h. to form a raised figure, cmp. גָּדַל II]. Yoma VI, 7 קְלָעָן, v. מַקֵּל. Sabb. 64ᵃ עני קוֹלֵעַ שלש וכ׳ a poor man twists three threads and hangs the cord around his daughter’s neck. Y. ib. X, 12ᶜ bot. הקולע שלש וכ׳ he that plaits three strings of hair on a person’s head. Tosef. Maasr. I, 6 היה עתיד לִקְלוֹעַ בשום ולאגוד וכ׳ (ed. Zuck. ליקָּלֵעַ … וליאגד, Nif.) if the intention was about the garlic crop to plait, and about the onions to tie them in bunches, אינו חייב עד שיִקְלַע ויאגד he is not bound to give the tithes until he plaits or ties (or עד שיִקָּלֵעַ ויֵאָגֵד until the things are plaited or bunched); a. e.—Trnsf. [to weave a wreath,] to adorn, praise. Midr. Till. to Ps. XCII, end; Yalk. Ps. 846 הוא קוֹלֵעַ על יריאיו … קוֹלְעִים לו וכ׳ he (God) praises those who fear him, and those who fear him praise him; you say (Ps. XCII, 16) &c., and I say, (Zeph. III, 13) &c. e.g. Psalms 92:16
- 1. same. Num. R. s. 9 היא קִילְּעָה לו וכ׳ (not קולעה) she plaited her hair to please him (her paramour), therefore the priest loosens her hair; Tosef. Sot. III, 3 ed. Zuck. note קלעה; a. e.
- 2. קִילְּעֶה or קִלְּעֶה (cmp. נתעלפה, s. v. עָלַף II) to plait a person’s hair, dress, adorn (v. supra). Ber. 61ᵃ; Koh. R. to VII, 2; Sabb. 95ᵃ; Erub. 18ᵃ; Nidd. 45ᵇ; Koh. R. to VII, 2 (ref. to ויבן, Gen. II, 22) מלמד שקילעה הקב"ה לחוה וכ׳ this intimates that the Lord dressed Eve &c., v. בִּנְיָיתָא. Y. Snh. II, 20ᵃ bot. (ref. to II Sam. XX, 3 ויכלכל, v. כִּלְכֵּל) מלמד שהיה דוד מְקַלַּעֲתָן וכ׳ this teaches that David had them dressed and adorned and made them come before him every day, and said to his evil inclination &c. e.g. Genesis 2:22
- to be plaited, v. supra.
קְלַע ²
- , to plait. Targ. Y. Num. V, 18 (v. Num. R. s. 9, quot. in preced.).
קֶלַע I
- sling. Sifra Sh’mini, Par. 6, ch. VIII כל כלי לרבות הק׳ וכ׳ ‘any receptacle’ (Lev. XI, 32), to include the sling &c. Eduy. III, 5 הק׳ שבית וכ׳ a sling the receptacle of which is of woven material. Sabb. 67ᵃ ק׳ נטושה (fem.), v. נָטַשׁ I. e.g. Leviticus 11:32
קֶלַע II
- c. (קָלַע II) twisted cord, rope; plait. Gen. R. s. 22 (ref. to Is. V, 18) כק׳ הזו של ספינה (prob. to be read עגלה) as the rope of a ship (a wagon), v. עֲבוֹת.—Pl. קְלָעִים. Yoma 47ᵃ מימי … קִלְעֵי שערי never did the beams of my house see the plaits of my hair (I always wear a cap in the house). e.g. Isaiah 5:18
קֶלַע III
- pl.; preced.)
- 1. curtain, sail. Tosef. B. Kam. VIII, 17 ובלבד שלא יפרוס את הק׳ וכ׳ provided one does not spread the sail and detain the boat (when fishing in the waters of a neighboring tribe).—Pl. קְלָעִים, קְלָעִין. Eduy. VIII, 6; Zeb. 107ᵇ; Meg. 10ᵃ, a. e. כשהיו … ק׳ להיכל וק׳ לעזרות when they were rebuilding the Temple, they made curtains for the Temple and curtains for the courts.—Esp. the curtains of the Tabernacle; trnsf. the partitions of the Temple corresponding to those of the Tabernacle. Zeb. V, 3 לפנים מן הק׳ inside of the enclosures (in the Temple court); a. e.
- 2. (pl.) tents at fairs, shops. Snh. 106ᵃ עֲשֵׂה להן ק׳ וכ׳ put up shops for them and place therein prostitutes &c.; עָשָׂה להן ק׳ וכ׳ (Ar. קעילין) he put up shops for them &c.; Sifré Num. 131 ק׳ Var. (ed. מקולין; Yalk. ib. 771 קעילין; Y. Snh. X, 28ᵈ top קנקלין).
קְלַע ³
- 1. sail, curtain. Targ. Is. XXXIII, 23.—Pl. קִלְעִין, קִי׳, קְלָעַיָּיא. Ib. XVIII, 1. Ib. LX, 9.—Y. Sabb. XX, beg. 17ᶜ הוון פרסין קִילְעַיָּה וכ׳ they spread the curtains a day before to the length of four cubits.
- 2. curtained enclosure. Erub. 63ᵇ (in Hebr. dict.) הישן בק׳ וכ׳ (Ms. M. a. Yalk. Mic. 551 הלן בכילה; Ar. a. En Yaăḳ. ed. pr. בקעילה; ed. Cost. בקליעא, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) he that sleeps in a compartment in which husband and wife are. Ned. 22ᵇ זיל לקִילְעָךְ go to thy room (I cannot help thee).—Esp. ante-room, hall. Ber. 22ᵇ top בק׳ דרב וכ׳ in the anteroom of Rab O. M. Kat. 24ᵇ; a. e.—[Pl. קִלְעָתָא, v. קְלִיעֲתָא.]
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 H7049 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/קָלַ֣ע | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 6:32 | 1 |
| וְ/קָלַ֤ע | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 6:35 | 1 |
| וַ/יְקַלַּ֔ע | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Samuel 17:49 | 1 |
| יְקַלְּעֶ֔/נָּה | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Samuel 25:29 | 1 |
| קָלַ֗ע | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Kings 6:29 | 1 |
| קֹלֵ֧עַ | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 20:16 | 1 |
| קוֹלֵ֛עַ | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 10:18 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7049, 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.
Derived from this word
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. 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 6 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.
