רְבָבָה
myriad
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 10 times (56%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 7 times (39%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (6%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 18 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H7233 appears — 16 distinct verses across 10 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Leviticus 1 verse
Numbers 1 verse
Deuteronomy 3 verses
- Deuteronomy 32:30 רְבָבָ֑ה n c fs How should one chase a thousand, Two put ten thousand to flight, Except their Rock had sold them, Yahweh had delivered them up?
- Deuteronomy 33:2 מֵ/רִבְבֹ֣ת prep + n c fp cs He said, Yahweh came from Sinai, Rose from Seir to them; He shined forth from Mount Paran, He came from the ten thousands of holy ones: At his right hand was a fiery law for them.
- Deuteronomy 33:17 רִבְב֣וֹת n c fp cs The firstborn of his herd, majesty is his; His horns are the horns of the wild-ox: With them he shall push the peoples all of them, [even] the ends of the earth: They are the ten thousands of Ephraim, They are the thousands of Manasseh.
Judges 1 verse
1 Samuel 4 verses
- 1 Samuel 18:7 בְּ/רִבְבֹתָֽי/ו prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms The women sang one to another as they played, and said, Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands.
- 1 Samuel 18:8 רְבָב֔וֹת n c fp Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him; and he said, They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom?
- 1 Samuel 21:11 ב/רבבת/ו בְּ/רִבְבֹתָֽי/ו prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms The servants of Achish said to him, "Isn't this David the king of the land? Didn't they sing one to another about him in dances, saying, 'Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands?'"
- 1 Samuel 29:5 ב/רבבת/ו בְּ/רִבְבֹתָֽי/ו prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3ms Is not this David, of whom they sang one to another in dances, saying, Saul has slain his thousands, David his ten thousands?
Psalms 2 verses
Song of Solomon 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Micah 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.
At its core, רבבה (rᵉbâbâh) means “myriad.” Where the King James Version says “ten thousands,” newer translations reach for “myriads” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. It appears 16 verses across 10 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to 1 Samuel (25%), then Deuteronomy and Psalms. First canonically at Genesis 24:60, it enters the text early. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7233 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 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 16 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 4 verses 25%
- Deuteronomy 3 verses 19%
- Psalms 2 verses 13%
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 16 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 44%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 38%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 19%
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: Ten thousands 6×, Ten thousand 2×
- American Standard Version: Ten thousands 5×, Ten thousand 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Ten thousand 4×, Tens of thousands 4×, Myriads 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Myriads 5×, Ten thousands of 3×, Myriad 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7233 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H7233 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H7233 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H7233 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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.
- multitude, myriad, ten thousand
Word origin
n. f. multitude, myriad, ten thousand (Köii. 1, 221);—abs. ר׳ Gn 24:60 +; sf. רִבְבָתוֹ Kt 1 S 18:7 + 2 times (Qr רִבְבֹתָיו); pl. abs. רְבָבוֹת 1 S 18:8; cstr. רִֽבְבוֹת Mi 6:7 +, רִֽבֲבוֹת Dt 33:17; sf. v. supr. Qr;—myriad, 10,000: of great number of pers., indef. Gn 24:60 (J; אַלְפֵי רְבָבָה thousands of myriads), Dt 33:2 (poem; מֵרִבְבוֹת קֹדֶשׁ, but v. קֹדֶשׁ, ad fin.), ψ 3:7 Ct 5:10; רִֽבְבוֹת אַלְפֵי יִשׂ׳ Nu 10:36, cf. Dt 33:17 (poem);—רְבָבָה Ez 16:7 read רְבִי 𝔊 Co Berthol Krae;—more precisely: (100, 1000), 10,000, Ju 20:10; opp. 2, Dt 32:30 (poem), opp. 100, Lv 26:8 (H), opp. 1000, 1 S 18:7, 8; 21:12; 29:5 ψ 91:7; so of things, Mi 6:7.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רבב (râbab) (H7231) — to become many.
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.
רְבָבָה
- large quantity, myriad. Gen. R. s. 60 (ref. to Gen. XXIV, 60) ועמדו … ור׳ מיעקב from her (Rebekah) arose chiefs (allufim) of Esau, and myriads of Jacob; a. e.—Pl. רְבָבוֹת, constr. רִבֵּי, רִיבֵּי. Gen. R. s. 89 (play on ר̇ה̇ב̇ים, Ps. XL, 5) ה̇מון ר̇יב̇י רַבְרְבַיָּא שהם וכ׳ (he regarded not) the noise of the myriads of great (boastful) men, for they turn after lies (v., however, רַבְרְבָא).—V. רִבּוֹא. e.g. Genesis 24:60
רִבֵּי
- , pl. constr. of רְבָבָה.
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 14 distinct written forms H7233 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7233, 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
- רב rab H7227 many
- רב rôb H7230 multitude
- רבב râbab H7232 to shoot
- רבו ribbôw H7239 ten thousand
- רביב râbîyb H7241 heavy showers
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 9 — 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 16 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 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
- Genesis 24:60
- Leviticus 26:8
- Numbers 10:36
- Deuteronomy 32:30
- Judges 20:10
- 1 Samuel 18:7
- Psalms 3:6
- Song of Solomon 5:10
- Ezekiel 16:7
- Micah 6:7
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.
