קִרְיַת אַרְבַּע
Kirjath-arba
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Kirjath-arba’ 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7153 appears in the Book of Joshua — 5 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.
Joshua
- Joshua 14:15 קִרְיַ֣ת אַרְבַּ֔ע n Proper adj Cardinal number fs Now the name of Hebron before was Kiriath Arba; [which Arba was] the greatest man among the Anakim. The land had rest from war.
- Joshua 15:13 קִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע n Proper adj Cardinal number fs To Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of Yahweh to Joshua, even Kiriath Arba, [which Arba was] the father of Anak (the same is Hebron).
- Joshua 15:54 וְ/קִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע conj + n Proper adj Cardinal number fs and Humtah, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron), and Zior; nine cities with their villages.
- Joshua 20:7 קִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע n Proper adj Cardinal number fs They set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill-country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and Kiriath Arba (the same is Hebron) in the hill-country of Judah.
- Joshua 21:11 קִרְיַת֩ אַרְבַּ֨ע n Proper adj Cardinal number fs They gave them Kiriath Arba, [which Arba was] the father of Anak (the same is Hebron), in the hill-country of Judah, with the suburbs of it round about it.
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.
קרית ארבע (Qiryath ʼArbaʻ) is a Hebrew name most often rendered “Kirjath-arba.” It clusters heavily in Joshua, which alone accounts for 56% of its uses. With 9 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Genesis 23:2. For the data behind this summary, explore 9-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7153 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 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 9 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 22%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 11%
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: Kirjatharba 4×, Was kirjatharba 2×
- American Standard Version: Kiriath-arba 5×, Was kiriath-arba 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Kiriath-arba 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Kiriath arba 6×, Arba 5×, Kiriath 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7153 across 7 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7153 across 7 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7153 across 9 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 H7153 across 18 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 2 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.
- Kirjath-arba = "city of Arba"
- early name of the city which after the conquest was called 'Hebron'
Word origin
n.pr.loc. older name of Hebron; πόλις Αρβο(κ), Καρ(ι)αθαρβοκ, etc. (prob. = fourfold city (otherwise Jos 14:15; 15:13; 21:11), v. especially GFM);—Jos 14:15 (JED), Ju 1:10b (ק׳ אַרְבַּ֑ע), also Gn 23:2; Jos 15:13, 54; 20:7; 21:11 (all P); ק׳ הָא׳ Gn 35:27 (P) Ne 11:25.—Vid. חֶבְרוֹן.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קריה (qiryâh) (H7151) — city.
Forms in the corpus
The 12 distinct written forms H7153 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אַרְבַּ֛ע | Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 23:2 | 4 |
| קִרְיַ֣ת | Noun, Proper | Genesis 35:27 | 3 |
| קִרְיַ֥ת | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:13 | 2 |
| אַרְבַּ֑ע | Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 1:10 | 1 |
| אַרְבַּ֔ע | Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Joshua 14:15 | 1 |
| אַרְבַּ֨ע | Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Joshua 21:11 | 1 |
| בְּ/קִרְיַ֤ת | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 11:25 | 1 |
| בְּ/קִרְיַ֥ת | Noun, Proper | Genesis 23:2 | 1 |
| הָֽאַרְבַּ֑ע | Noun, Proper | Genesis 35:27 | 1 |
| הָֽאַרְבַּע֙ | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 11:25 | 1 |
| וְ/קִרְיַ֥ת | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:54 | 1 |
| קִרְיַת֩ | Noun, Proper | Joshua 21:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7153, 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.
- קריות Qᵉrîyôwth H7152 Kerioth
- קרית בעל Qiryath Baʻal H7154 Kirjath-baal
- קרית חצות Qiryath Chutsôwth H7155 Kirjath-huzoth
- קריתים Qiryâthayim H7156 Kiriathaim
- קרית יערים Qiryath Yᵉʻârîym H7157 Kirjath-jearim
- קרית סנה Qiryath Çannâh H7158 Kirjath-sepher
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. 6 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Kirjath-arba). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
City of Arba, the original name of Hebron (q.v.), so called from the name of its founder, one of the Anakim (Gen. 23:2; 35:27; Josh. 15:13). It was given to Caleb by Joshua as his portion. The Jews interpret the name as meaning "the city of the four", i.e., of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Adam, who were all, as they allege, buried there.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(the city of Arba), an early name of the city which after the conquest is generally known as Hebron. (Joshua 14:15; Judges 1:10) The identity of Kirjath-arba with Hebron is constantly asserted. (Genesis 23:2; 35:27; Joshua 14:15; 15:13,54; 20:7; 21:11)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
city of four; fourth city
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
