רָגַל
to walk
‘to walk’ is one of 3 main senses 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘slander’
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘go about’
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7270 appears in the Book of Psalms — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Psalms
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.
רגל — transliterated râgal — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to walk.” The King James Version usually renders it “spy out,” while modern versions prefer “spy on” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. It appears 24 verses across 9 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Genesis. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Qal and Piel. See the sense tree, 24-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7270 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 →
- 24
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 24 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,282
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,282 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 24 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 24 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 13 verses · 54%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 9 verses · 38%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 8%
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: Spy out 5×, Spies 3×, Spy 2×
- American Standard Version: Spy out 6×, Spies 4×, Spy 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Spies 8×, Spy out 6×, Are spies 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Spy on 7×, Spies 6×, Are spies 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7270 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H7270 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H7270 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H7270 across 28 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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 5 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.
Qal
- go about (maliciously, as slanderer; cf. Arabic مُشَاةٌ and سَاعٍ slanderer, from √√ مَشَى walk along, سَعَى walk quickly), slander, Pf. 3 ms. לאֹ־ר׳ עַל־לְשֹׁנוֹ ψ 15:3 he takes no slander upon his tongue (‖ דֹּבֵר אֱמֶת v 2). e.g. Psalms 15:3
Piel
- Impf. 3 ms. וַיְרַגֵּל 2 S 19:28, 3 mpl. וַיְרַגְּלוּ Dt 1:24 Jos 7:2; Imv. mpl. רַגְּלוּ Jos 7:2; Inf. cstr. לְרַגֵּל Nu 21:32 + 5 times; sf. לְרַגְּלַהּ 2 S 10:3; Pt. pl. מְרַגְּלִים Gn 42:9 + 11 times;— e.g. 2 Samuel 19:28
- 1. slander (cf. Qal), וַיְר׳ בְּעַבְדְּךָ אֶל 2 S 19:28. e.g. 2 Samuel 19:28
- 2. go about as explorer, spy, c. acc. loc. Nu 21:32 Jos 6:25; 7:2, 2; 14:7 (all JE), Ju 18:2 (‖ חָקַר), v 14, 17 2 S 10:3 (‖ חָקַר), 1 Ch 19:3, so also pt. Gn 42:30 (E), Jos 6:22 (JE); pt., acc. om., as adj., אֲנַשִׁים מְרַגְּלִים Jos 2:1, cf. 6:23 (both JE); as subst., spies 1 S 26:4; 2 S 15:10, and so perhaps (as pred.) Gn 42:9, 11, 14, 16, 31, 34 (all E). e.g. Numbers 21:32
Tiph
- Pf. 1 s. תִּרְגַּלְתִּי לְאֶכְּרַיִם Ho 11:3 I taught Ephr. to walk (si vera l.; v. Ges§ 55 h). e.g. Hosea 11:3
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
vb.denom. foot it, go about;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
רָגַל
- (b. h.) to move on, run.—[Part. pass., v. רָגוּל.]
- (v. רָגִיל) to be wont to. Nidd. 16ᵇ שרֹ הנִרְגָּל וכ׳ a magistrate (a scholar) who is an habitual visitor of drinking houses; v. רָגַז a. רָגַן.
- 1. (denom. of (denom. of רֶגֶל) to flay an animal from its feet upward (in order to use the skin as a bag, v. חֵמֶת). Ḥull. IX, 3 המַרְגִּיל וכ׳ if one flays from the feet upward, the entire skin is considered as connected (with the flesh, as long as the process lasts) for purposes of levitical cleanness. Tosef. Bets. II, 11 אין מַרְגִּילִין וכ׳ we must not flay from the feet on a Holy Day, nor on a week day when the animal is a firstborn &c.; Bekh. 33ᵃ; Tem. 24ᵃ
- 2. to make familiar, to accustom. Sabb. 13ᵃ שמא יַרְגִּילֶנּוּ אצלו lest he make him accustomed to associate with him. Ib. וכי מַרְגִּילוֹ וכ׳ and if he does accustom him, what of it? Ab. III, 13 שחוק … מַרְגִּילִין וכ׳, v. קַלּוּת; a. e.
- 3. to lead; to persuade. Ber. 60ᵇ ותַרְגִּילֵנִי לידי מצוה ואל תרגילני וכ׳ and lead me into the power (to the opportunity) of good deeds, and lead me not into the power of sin. Ib. שתרגילני בתורתך that thou mayest lead me by thy Law.—Yeb. 85ᵇ זהו מַרְגִּילוֹ וזוהי מַרְגִּילָתוֹ in the one case he leads (persuades) her to marry him, in the other case she persuades him; a. fr.
- 4. to bring about; cause. Ber. 22ᵃ, sq. המרגיל (sub. קרי) who causes an effusion of semen, opp. לאונסו.
- to accustom one’s self, get used to. Y. Sabb. I, 3ᶜ top שהוא מִתְרַגֵּל עמו וכ׳ when he gets used to associate with him when he is unclean himself, he is likely to associate with him when he is clean. Y. Ned. XI, end, 42ᵈ יעשו סעודה והן מִתְרַגְּלִין לַבָּא וכ׳ (some ed. לבוא) let a banquet be arranged, and they (the disaffected couple) will get used in future to associate with each other through the influence of the banquet.
רְגַל
- , to move, run. Part. רָגֵיל. Bekh. 11ᵃ, v. רִגְיָא.—Part. pass. רָגִיל used, q. v.—Sabb. 119ᵃ דר׳ דזבן who is wont to buy (fish for the Sabbath). Ib. bot. אי רְגִילִיתוּ וכ׳ if you are accustomed to &c., v. קְרַם; a. e.
- to cause to run. Y. Ab. Zar. V, 45ᵃ אהו דמְרַגֵּל זיקא וכ׳ he that makes the jet of wine run from above downward.
- to lead; to accustom. Yeb. 85ᵇ היא מַרְגְּלָא ליה she leads (persuades) him, v. preced.—Part. pass. מַרְגַּל; f. מַרְגְּלָא, v. מַרְגְּלָא I.
- to accustome one’s self, make it a habit. Ned. 66ᵇ כי היכי דלא לִתְרַגְּלֵי למנדר (Rashi לִירַגְּלֵי) that they may not make it a habit to vow.
רֶגֶל
- preced.)
- 1. foot; leg; (of quadrupeds) hindleg. Sabb. 31ᵃ כשאני עומד על ר׳ אחת within the time that I can stand on one leg. Ḥull. II, 6, v. פִּרְכֵּס II; a. v. fr.—Esp. (sub. נזק) the damage done by an animal’s foot, treading, stamping. B. Kam. 2ᵇ, v. שֵׁן. Ib. 3ᵃ; a. fr.—תורת (ה)ר׳ the law for the protection of travellers, permission to trade. Tanḥ. B’shall. 12 (the Sodomites said) בואו ונשכח ת׳ הר׳ וכ׳ come, let us make the law of free trade forgotten in our land; Snh. 109ᵃ; a. e.—לר׳ (v. next w.) in the wake of, for the sake of (cmp. שְׁבִיל). Gen. R. s. 97 (ref. to רגלי, Num. XI, 21) כולן לרַגְלִי עלו they all came up (from Egypt) for my sake. Yalk. Sam. 143 יצחק … לרַגְלוֹ Isaac went down to Gerar, and blessing came down for his sake, a. e.—Du. רַגְלַיִם; pl. רְגָלִים. Nidd. 31ᵃ, v. הִילּוּךְ. Ber. 10ᵇ המתפלל … את רַגְלָיו he that says the prayers (תְּפִלָּה) must direct his feet (stand straight). Ḥull. III, 7, v. קַרְסוּל. Ib. IV, 6 בהמה … רַגְלֶיהָ an animal that had its hindlegs cut off. Ber. 32ᵃ כסא של שלש ר׳ a chair with three legs (the merits of the three patriarchs); a. v. fr.—מאין הר׳, v. אַיִן II.—מי ר׳, v. מַיִם.—ר׳ לדבר (the thing has feet to stand on,) there is a basis, a reason for it. Naz. IX, 3 שר׳ לד׳ for there is a reason (to assume that the field once was a burial ground). Ib. 4; a. fr. e.g. Numbers 11:21
- 2. [pilgrimage,] one of the three festivals (Ex. XXIII, 14). M. Kat. III, 5 שלשה … קודם לר׳ three days before a festival. Ib. 19ᵃ, sq. ערב הר׳ the eve of a festival. Ib. 20ᵃ כל שהוא משום אבל הר׳ מפסיקו וכ׳ an intervening festival interrupts whatever concerns the mourning itself (and the mourning observances must be continued after the festival). Num. R. s. 19 ועשו את הר׳ וכ׳ they observed the festival in Tishri, and after the festive season they took up the war against Sihon. Yoma 21ᵃ בשעה … עולין לר׳ when the Israelites went to the Temple for the festive visit. R. Hash. 4ᵇ, a. fr. שמיני ר׳ בפני וכ׳ the eighth day of Succoth is an independent festival; a. v. fr.—ר׳ רדופין, v. רָדַף.—Pl. as ab. R. Hash. I, 1 the first of Nisan is ראש השנה … ולר׳ is the beginning of the year for the date of the years of kings and for the order of the festivals (making Passover the first). Pes. 8ᵇ, a. fr. עולי ר׳ pilgrims to the Temple, v. supra. Erub. 40ᵇ, a. fr. שלשה ר׳ the three festivals. Ib. לא איקרו ר׳ they (New Year and Day of Atonement) are not called r’galim (pilgrims’ festivals); a. fr. e.g. Exodus 23:14
רֶגֶל ²
- 1. foot, leg; pace. Targ. Lev. XXI, 19. Targ. Gen. XXXIII, 14 (O. ed. Berl. לרֵיגַל); a. fr.—Y. Maas. Sh. IV, end, 55ᶜ רִגְלִי, v. קַטִּין II, a. סַרְבֵּל. Y. Shebi. IX, 39ᵃ top ר׳ צלילא, v. צְלַל; a. fr.—Trnsf. good or bad luck coming in the wake of. Targ. Y. Gen. XXX, 30.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᵃ ברִגְלֵיה חריב וברגליה וכ׳ in his luck (when he was born) the Temple was destroyed, and in his luck it will be rebuilt; Lam. R. to I, 16 על רִיגְלוֹי (pl.). Y. Ab. Zar. III, 42ᵈ top ריגליה דיעקב, v. נֵרְגַל.—Pl. רִגְלַיָּא, רִגְלִין, רִגְלָן, רִי׳, רַגְ׳. Targ. Lev. XI, 42. Targ. Ps. XXVI, 12 Ms. (ed. sing.). Targ. Esth. V, 1 מוי דר׳ = מי רגלים, v. מַיִם. Targ. Y. Lev. IX, 14; ib. VIII, 21 ריגלאה (corr. acc.); a. fr.—Y. Kil. IX, 32ᶜ bot. רִיגְלוֹי דבר וכ׳; Succ. 53ᵃ רִגְלוֹהִי וכ׳, v. עֲרַב I; a. fr.
- 2. festival, festive season, esp. the season of the Babylonian academies in Adar and Elul. Bekh. 60ᵃ תירגמה … בר׳ R. H. bar S. interpreted it before Raba at the college session (on the Sabbath preceding a festival, Rashi). Snh. 7ᵇ בשבתא דר׳ on the first Sabbath of the season; a. fr.
- 3. (from its shape) a forked carrying pole which can be fixed in the ground when the carrier is resting. Bets. 30ᵃ, a. e., v. דִּגְלָא.—[Targ. Prov. XIV, 5; XXIV, 28 (ed. Wil. רַגָלָא); XIX, 28 (ed. Wil. רגלאה); Ab. Zar. 22ᵇ, v. דַּגָּלָא.]
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 20 distinct written forms H7270 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 H7270, 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.
Derived from this word
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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 24 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 24 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 42:9
- Numbers 21:32
- Deuteronomy 1:24
- Joshua 2:1
- Judges 18:2
- 1 Samuel 26:4
- 2 Samuel 10:3
- 1 Chronicles 19:3
- Psalms 15:3
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.
