אֶבֶן הָעֵזֶר
Ebenezer
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Ebenezer’ 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.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H72 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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 3 verses
- 1 Samuel 4:1 הָ/אֶ֣בֶן הָעֵ֔זֶר ptcl def.art + n Proper n Proper The word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and encamped beside Ebenezer: and the Philistines encamped in Aphek.
- 1 Samuel 5:1 מֵ/אֶ֥בֶן הָעֵ֖זֶר conj + n Proper n Proper Now the Philistines had taken the ark of God, and they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod.
- 1 Samuel 7:12 אֶ֣בֶן הָעָ֑זֶר n Proper n Proper Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto has Yahweh helped us.
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.
At its core, אבן העזר (ʼEben hâ-ʻÊzer) means “Ebenezer.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its uses cluster heavily in 1 Samuel (100% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in 1 Samuel 4:1. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H72 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 3 verses 100%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 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).
- King James Version: Ebenezer 2×
- American Standard Version: Eben-ezer 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ebenezer 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ebenezer 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H72 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 H72 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H72 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H72 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
9 senses and sub-senses in the full BDB
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 9 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.
- 1. in natural state
- 2. stone, as material
- 3. precious stone, gen. with modifying word
- 4. stone containing metal, = ore
- 5. a weight, as orig. stone
- 6. plummet
- 7. objects like stone
- 8. in sim. (mostly poet.) of sinking in water
- 9. In topogr. terms
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
Derived from אבן (ʼeben) (H68) — stone.
Forms in the corpus
The 6 distinct written forms H72 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶ֣בֶן | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 7:12 | 1 |
| הָ/אֶ֣בֶן | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 4:1 | 1 |
| הָעֵ֔זֶר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 4:1 | 1 |
| הָעֵ֖זֶר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 5:1 | 1 |
| הָעָ֑זֶר | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 7:12 | 1 |
| מֵ/אֶ֥בֶן | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 5:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H72, 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 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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Ebenezer). 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
Stone of help, the memorial stone set up by Samuel to commemorate the divine assistance to Israel in their great battle against the Philistines, whom they totally routed (1 Sam. 7:7-12) at Aphek, in the neighbourhood of Mizpeh, in Benjamin, near the western entrance of the pass of Beth-horon. On this very battle-field, twenty years before, the Philistines routed the Israelites, "and slew of the army in the field about four thousand men" (4:1, 2; here, and at 5:1, called "Eben-ezer" by anticipation). In this extremity the Israelites fetched the ark out of Shiloh and carried it into their camp. The Philistines a second time immediately attacked them, and smote them with a very great slaughter, "for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the ark of God was taken" (1 Sam. 4:10). And now in the same place the Philistines are vanquished, and the memorial stone is erected by Samuel (q.v.). The spot where the stone was erected was somewhere "between Mizpeh and Shen." Some have identified it with the modern Beit Iksa, a conspicuous and prominent position, apparently answering all the necessary conditions; others with Dier Aban, 3 miles east of Ain Shems.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(stone of help), a stone set up by Samuel after a signal defeat of the Philistines, as a memorial of the "help" received on the occasion from Jehovah. (1 Samuel 7:12) Its position is carefully defined as between Mizpeh and Shen.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
the stone of help
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
