קֵרֵחַ
bald
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.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7142 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.
Leviticus 1 verse
2 Kings 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.
קרח — transliterated qêrêach — is a Hebrew adjective carrying the sense “bald.” It is rare — just 2 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. More than half of its appearances fall in Leviticus. Its earliest occurrence is Leviticus 13:40. It shares a root with קרח, קרח and קרחה. See the sense tree, 2-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7142 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.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 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: Thou bald head 2×
- American Standard Version: Go up thou baldhead 1×, He is bald 1×, Thou baldhead 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: You baldhead 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bald 2×, One 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7142 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7142 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7142 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H7142 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- bald
Word origin
adj. bald;—Lv 13:40 (distinct from גִּכֵּחַ v 41); n.m. 2 K 2:23(×2).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קרח (qârach) (H7139) — to be bald.
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.
קֵרֵחַ
- v. next w.) bald, bald head. Gen. R. s. 65, v. קִיוֵּוץ. Bekh. VII, 2 הק׳ פסול a bald-headed person is unfit for priestly functions; איזה ק׳ כל וכ׳ bald-headed (in a legal sense) is he who has not a line of hair from ear to ear. Ib. 58ᵃ הק׳ הזה that bald head (R. Akiba). B. Kam. 60ᵇ נמצא ק׳ מכאן וק׳ מכאן finally he is bald from here and bald from there (has neither white nor black hair); a. fr.—Gitt. VIII, 9, a. e. גט ק׳ a letter of divorce that lacks signatures on each of its folds (v. קָשַׁר).—Pl. קֵרְחִים, קֵרְחִין. Y. Yoma II, end, 40ᵃ הכהנים לרבות הק׳ ‘the priests’ (Lev. I, 5), this includes the bald heads (as fit for that function); Sifra Vayikra, N’dab., Par. 4, ch. VI קַרְחָנִים; Bekh. 43ᵇ קרְחָנִין.—Fem. קֵרַחַת. B. Bath. 132ᵃ ק׳ מכאן ומכאן she is bald on both sides, i.e. has forfeited both claims on her husband’s estate. e.g. Leviticus 1:5
קֵרֵחַ ²
- Targ. O. Lev. XIII, 40 (ed. Berl. קְרֵיחַ; some ed. קְרַח); Y. קְרוּחַ.
קָרַח
- (b. h.) [to be round and smooth,] (denom. of קֵרֵחַ) to make a bald spot. Macc. III, 5 הקוֹרִחַ קרחה וכ׳ he that makes a baldness upon his head. Ib. 20ᵃ יכול אפי׳ ק׳ … קריחות וכ׳ lest you think that even if one makes four or five spots, he is guilty only of one act; Kidd. 36ᵃ; a. e.
- to become bald, hairless, smooth. Maasr. I, 3 האגסים … משיִקָּרְהוּ (Y. ed. משׁיַקְרִיחוּ, a. משיקרחו) pears … are subject to tithes when their surface begins to grow smooth, v. infra. Neg. VIII, 5 חזר … ונִקְרְחוּ if head and chin changed and became bald; Tosef. ib. III, 10 (not שנ׳); a. e.
- 1. same. Tosef. Maasr. I, 2 משיַקְרִיחוּ (not משיקד׳), v. supra. Y. ib. I, 48ᵈ bot. משיקריחו … משיעשו קרחות … לבנות ‘when they get smooth’ (Mish. ib. I, 3, v. supra) …, that means, when they begin to get white, smooth spots (cmp. קְרוּחַ). Ib. וכי מחמת האוכל הן מַקְרִיחִין וכ׳ do the fruits get white spots because of the development of the eatable matter (flesh), is it not on account of worms?; a. e.
- 2. to make bare, raze. Y. Kil. IV, beg. 29ᵃ קרחת … מקריחין אותו וכ׳ ‘a bald portion of a vineyard’ (Mish. ib. IV, 1) is one which is razed in the centre; כרם שחרב מקריחין וכ׳ ‘a waste vineyard’ (ib. 2) is one which is razed on all sides. Sot. 46ᵇ (play on קרח, II Kings II, 23) שהִקְרַחְתָּ עלינו את המקום thou hast made the place bare for us (ruined our water trade by healing the well); a. e.—Part. pass. מוּקְרָח; pl. מוּקְרָחִין. Y. Kil. I, 27ᵇ bot. ששה על ששה מוק׳ וכ׳ when one throws mixed seeds into a plot of six (cubits) by six which lies vacant within a field of grains or which is fenced in. e.g. 2 Kings 2:23
קְרַח I
- , to make bald; to become bald. Pes. 110ᵃ bot. (in an incantation) ק׳ קרחייכי bald be your baldness (may the hair with which you practice your witchcraft fall out). Y. Sabb. XX, end, 17ᵈ (perh. Hebrew) קְרוֹחַ קריחה make bald a bald head (?), v. צְנִינִים.—[Snh. 109ᵇ עד דקרחא some ed., read: דקדחא, v. קְדַח.]
קֶרַח
- (preced. wds.) baldness. Kidd. 36ᵃ (ref. to קרחה Lev. XXI, 5) א"כ נכתוב קרא ק׳ וכ׳ if this were so, the text should read ḳeraḥ, why is it ḳorḥah? e.g. Leviticus 21:5
קרח
- , Sifra Thazr., Neg. ch. I; Yalk. Lev. 550, read: קֶדַח.
קֹרַח
- (b. h.) pr. n. m. Korah, leader of a rebellion against Moses. Tosef. Snh. XIII, 9 ק׳ ועדתו וכ׳ Korah and his followers have no share in the world to come; Snh. 109ᵇ עדת ק׳ וכ׳ the followers of K. have &c. Ib. ק׳ שנעשה קרחה וכ׳ (Ms. M. שעשה) he is named Korah (Bald), because baldness (depopulation) was created in Israel; a. v. fr.
קְרַח II
- 1. = h. קֵרֵחַ, v. קֵרֵחַ ch.—Targ. II Kings II, 23 קרְ׳ (ed. Ven. קָרָ׳).—Snh. 63ᵇ ברחא ק׳, v. אֲשִׁימָא. Sabb. 152ᵃ, v. בַּרְחָא, a. מַצּוּיָינָא.
- 2. (cmp. גולבינא a. גלב) a species of peas (P. Sm. s. v. קרחא, 3740 ‘peanuts’).—Pl. קַרְחִין. Y. Ned. IV, 38ᵈ top מי סורס וק׳ an infusion of sores and ḳarḥim
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 3 distinct written forms H7142 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| קֵרֵ֖חַ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 2:23 | 1 |
| קֵרֵ֥חַ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 13:40 | 1 |
| קֵרֵֽחַ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 2:23 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7142, 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 7 — 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.
