קֶ֫רַע
rag
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.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H7168 appears — 4 distinct verses across 3 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.
1 Kings 2 verses
- 1 Kings 11:30 קְרָעִֽים n c mp Ahijah laid hold of the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces.
- 1 Kings 11:31 קְרָעִ֑ים n c mp He said to Jeroboam, Take ten pieces; for thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to you
2 Kings 1 verse
Proverbs 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.
קרע — transliterated qeraʻ — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “rag.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 4 verses. More than half of its appearances fall in 1 Kings. Its earliest occurrence is 1 Kings 11:30. It shares a root with קרע, קערה and קרקע. See the sense tree, 4-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7168 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 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 4 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 25%
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: Pieces 3×
- American Standard Version: Pieces 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Pieces 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Pieces 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7168 across 4 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 H7168 across 4 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7168 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7168 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 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.
- rag, torn pieces of garment or fabric
Word origin
[ קֶ֫רַע ] n.m. torn piece of garment, rag
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קרע (qâraʻ) (H7167) — to tear.
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.
קָרַע
- (b. h.) to tear, split; esp. to rend the garment in mourning. Kel. XVI, 5 עד שיִקְרְעֶנּוּ (Mish. ed. שיַקְרִיעֶנּוּ Hif.) until he tears the bale open. M. Kat. 22ᵇ על כל … אינו קוֹרֵעַ אלא עליון for all dead (except parents) … one must rend only the upper garment. Ib. האשה קוֹרַעַת וכ׳ a woman (mourning for her parents) rends the lower garment and puts it back in its place, and then rends the upper garment. Snh. 60ᵃ אחד השומע … חייב לִקְרוֹעַ both he that hears a blasphemy directly, and he that hears it from one that heard it (and reports as witness before court) must rend his garment; a. v. fr.—Part. pass. קָרוּעַ; pl. קְרוּעִים, קְרוּעִין. M. Kat. 26ᵇ היוצא בבגד ק׳ וכ׳ he that marches before a corpse with a garment rent (for a previous case) robs (deceives) the dead and the living. Ib.ᵃ (ref. to II Kings II, 12) ק׳ ועומדים לשנים remaining always rent in two; ib. 22ᵇ (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 4); Snh. l. c.; a. fr. e.g. 2 Kings 2:12
- 1. same. M. Kat. 26ᵇ ואין מְקָרְעִין בפניו you must not rend your garment in his (the sick man’s) presence. Ib. מקרעין לקטן וכ׳ we rend a minor’s garment in order to make him feel sad; ib. 14ᵇ. R. Hash. 16ᵇ ארבעה … מקרעין גזר וכ׳ four things cause an evil decree passed on man to be torn (cancelled), they are: charity, prayer &c.; a. fr.
- 2. (cmp. גָּרַע) to scrape, to mark the outlines of letters by abrasion. Gitt. 19ᵇ עדים … מקרעין להם וכ׳ for witnesses that know not how to sign their names, grooves are made on blank paper, and they fill the grooves out with ink; ib. 9ᵇ; Y. ib. II, 44ᵇ top ומְקָרֵעַ; [Tosaf. to Gitt. 9ᵇ: you cut the names out on blank paper and put it on the document, and the witnesses fill the cuts out]. Tosef. Sabb. XI (XII), 8, contrad. fr. רשם; a. e.
- to be torn; to be cut open, be operated upon by a section. Yeb. VIII, 6, a. e. טומטום שנ׳, v. טוּמְטוּם. Bekh. 42ᵇ שמא יִקָּרֵעַ וכ׳ he may have an operation performed, and be found a eunuch; Tosef. Yeb. XI, 1; Yeb. 83ᵇ. B. Bath. 168ᵇ נ׳ פסול נִתְקָרֵעַ כשר if a document is found torn, it is invalid; if it appears torn by accident, it is valid as evidence; ib. נ׳ קֶרַע של בית דין נתק׳ וכ׳ miḳrʿa refers to the rent as made in court for cancellation, nithḳareʿa refers to a rent different from the manner customary in court; Y. Gitt. II, 44ᵇ; a. e.
- to become torn, v. supra.
קְרַע
- M. Kat. 20ᵇ אמימר … ק׳ עילויה when Amemar’s grandson died, he rent his garment for him. Keth. 104ᵃ קַרְעִיה וכ׳, v. קִרְעָא; a. e.
- same. Targ. Ps. XXXV, 15 Ms. (ed. בזע).—Part. pass. מְקָרַע. Ber. 58ᵇ, v. וִילוֹן
- to be torn, cut open. Bekh. 42ᵇ אטו כל דמִיקְּרַע וכ׳ is every ṭumṭum that is operated upon found to be a male?; Yeb. 83ᵇ
קֶרַע
- preced.)
- 1. rent; piece. B. Bath. 168ᵇ ק׳ של בית דין, v. קָרַע; Y. Gitt. II, 44ᵇ. Ib. איזהו ק׳ … בין כתב לעדים which is a rent made in court? A cut between the writing and the signatures of the witnesses; (different in B. Bath. l. c.); a. e.—Esp. the rent in the garment as a symbol of mourning. M. Kat. 24ᵃ כל ק׳ שאינו … אינו ק׳ a rent not made at the moment of excitement (v. חִימּוּם) is no rent (has no symbolical meaning); Y. B. Mets. II, end, 8ᵈ, v. בֶּהָלָה. M. Kat. 22ᵇ, v. קְרִיעָה; a. fr.—Pl. קְרָעִים, קְרָעִין. Ib. 26ᵃ ואלו ק׳ שאין וכ׳ and these are the rents which must never be stitched together. Sifra Thazr. Par. 5, ch. XVI (ref. to Lev. XIII, 57) לימד על כל הק׳ וכ׳ this shows that all the torn-off pieces must be burnt. Snh. 60ᵃ נתמלא כל הבגד ק׳ one’s entire garment might soon be full of rents. Tosef. B. Kam. III, 2 לא יאמר … ואת הק׳ וכ׳ the injured person cannot say, take thou … the pieces (the torn garment) and restore to me a cloak; a. fr. e.g. Leviticus 13:57
- 2. the groove made by marking the outlines of letters. Y. Gitt. III, 44ᵇ מרחיב בפניהן את הק׳ (in the case of witnesses that know not how to sign their names) one must make wide grooves for them (so as to leave room for individual characters in filling out the outlines).—Pl. as ab. Bab. Gitt. 19ᵇ, v. קָרַע.
קֶרַע ²
- Keth. 104ᵃ קַרְעֵיה … לקִרְעֵיה וכ׳ he rent his garment (at Rabbi’s death), and turned the rent inside (to hide it); a. e.—Pl. קְרָעִין. Y. Kil. IX, 32ᵇ top וקרעון ואזל קלא דקרעין וכ׳ (not דקרעון) they rent their garments, and the lamentations accompanying the rending were heard as far &c., v. גּוֹבְבָתָא; Y. Keth. XII, 35ᵃ top קלה לק׳ (read: דק׳); Koh. R. to VII, 11, a. IX, 10 קליה דקריעה, read: דקִירְעָה (sing.).
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 H7168 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| קְרָעִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Kings 11:30 | 2 |
| וּ֝/קְרָעִ֗ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Proverbs 23:21 | 1 |
| קְרָעִ֑ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Kings 11:31 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7168, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
