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אֲבִינֵר

Abner

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Abner’ fuller range ↓

H74 Strong's Hebrew
ʼAbnêr Transliteration
/ab-nare'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 63 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

אבנר — transliterated ʼAbnêr — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Abner.” Its uses cluster heavily in 2 Samuel (75% of all occurrences). With 53 verses in 4 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in 1 Samuel 14:50. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Abner
Modern gloss
Abner
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H74 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 →

53
distinct verses
The word appears in 53 distinct verses.
4 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
1 Samuel 14:50
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in 1 Samuel 14:50.
1 Chronicles 27:21
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in 1 Chronicles 27:21.
#611
by frequency
Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 611 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 53 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 53 · 100%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 0 · 0%

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 53 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 51 verses · 96%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 4%

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).

BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.

  • King James Version: Abner 55×, Was abner 2×
  • American Standard Version: Abner 52×, Was abner 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Abner 51×, Abner’s 3×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abner 62×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H74 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Abner” 55×
  • “Was abner” 2×

Plus 6 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 H74 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Abner” 52×
  • “Was abner” 2×

Plus 9 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 H74 across 62 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Abner” 51×
  • “Abner’s” 3×

Plus 8 renderings that appear 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 H74 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Abner” 62×

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.

  1. Abner = "my father is a lamp"
  2. Saul's cousin and army captain, treacherously slain by Joab

Word origin

I. n.pr.m. (my father is Nêr, or is a lamp cf. 2 S 21:17; according to LagBN 75 = אֲבֶן (= בֶּן) + נֵר = son of Ner; cf. 𝔊 Ἀβεννηρ)—so only 1 S 14:50, elsewhere אַבְנֵר—cousin of Saul, and captain of his host 1 S 14:50, 51; 17:55(×3) + 52 times 1 & 2 S + 1 K 2:5, 32 1 Ch 26:28; 27:21.

I. v. אֲבִינֵר sub II. אָבָה.

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from אב (ʼâb) (H1) — father.

Part of speech: Proper Name Masculine


Forms in the corpus

The 22 distinct written forms H74 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
אַבְנֵ֖ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 14:51 8
אַבְנֵר֙ Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 17:55 8
אַבְנֵ֔ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 17:55 7
אַבְנֵ֑ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 17:55 6
אַבְנֵ֣ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 2:12 4
אַבְנֵ֤ר Noun, Proper 1 Kings 2:32 4
וְ/אַבְנֵ֣ר Noun, Proper 1 Chronicles 26:28 4
אַבְנֵ֗ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 2:21 3
אַבְנֵֽר Noun, Proper 1 Chronicles 27:21 3
אַבְנֵ֜ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 26:15 2
אַבְנֵ֥ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:28 2
לְ/אַבְנֵ֨ר Noun, Proper 1 Kings 2:5 2
אֲבִינֵ֔ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 14:50 1
אַבְנֵ֛ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:16 1
אַבְנֵ֨ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:12 1
אַבְנֵר֩ Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 2:23 1
וְ/אַבְנֵ֗ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:22 1
וְ/אַבְנֵ֛ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:6 1
וְ/אַבְנֵ֥ר Noun, Proper 1 Samuel 26:5 1
לְ/אַבְנֵ֑ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:30 1
לְ/אַבְנֵ֔ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:9 1
לְ/אַבְנֵ֛ר Noun, Proper 2 Samuel 3:20 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H74, 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.

+6 more proper names from this root (not shown).

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 34 — not the complete family. 30 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 (Abner). 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

Father of light; i.e., "enlightening", the son of Ner and uncle of Saul. He was commander-in-chief of Saul's army (1 Sam. 14:50; 17:55; 20:25). He first introduced David to the court of Saul after the victory over Goliath (1 Sam. 17:57). After the death of Saul, David was made king over Judah, and reigned in Hebron. Among the other tribes there was a feeling of hostility to Judah; and Abner, at the head of Ephraim, fostered this hostility in the interest of the house of Saul, whose son Ish-bosheth he caused to be proclaimed king (2 Sam. 2:8). A state of war existed between these two kings. A battle fatal to Abner, who was the leader of Ish-boseth's army, was fought with David's army under Joab at Gibeon (2 Sam. 2:12). Abner, escaping from the field, was overtaken by Asahel, who was "light of foot as a wild roe," the brother of Joab and Abishai, whom he thrust through with a back stroke of his spear (2 Sam. 2: 18-32).

Being rebuked by Ish-bosheth for the impropriety of taking to wife Rizpah, who had been a concubine of King Saul, he found an excuse for going over to the side of David, whom he now professed to regard as anointed by the Lord to reign over all Israel. David received him favourably, and promised that he would have command of the armies. At this time Joab was absent from Hebron, but on his return he found what had happened. Abner had just left the city; but Joab by a stratagem recalled him, and meeting him at the gate of the city on his return, thrust him through with his sword (2 Sam. 3:27, 31-39; 4:12. Comp. 1 Kings 2:5, 32). David lamented in pathetic words the death of Abner, "Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel?" (2 Sam. 3:33-38.)

Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863

(father of light).

+ Son of Ner, who was the brother of Kish, (1 Chronicles 9:36) the father of Saul. (B.C. 1063.) Abner, therefore, was Saul's first cousin, and was made by him commander-in-chief of his army. (1 Samuel 14:51; 17:57; 26:5-14) After the death of Saul David was proclaimed king of Judah; and some time subsequently Abner proclaimed Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, king of Israel. War soon broke out between the two rival kings, and a "very sore battle" was fought at Gibeon between the men of Israel under Abner and the men of Judah under Joab. (1 Chronicles 2:16) Abner had married Rizpah, Saul's concubine, and this, according to the views of Oriental courts, might be so interpreted as to imply a design upon the throne. Rightly or wrongly, Ish-bosheth so understood it, and he even ventured to reproach Abner with it. Abner, incensed at his ingratitude, opened negotiations with David, by whom he was most favorably received at Hebron. He then undertook to procure his recognition throughout Israel; but after leaving his presence for the purpose was enticed back by Joab, and treacherously murdered by him and his brother Abishai, at the gate of the city, partly, no doubt, from fear lest so distinguished a convert to their cause should gain too high a place in David's favor, but ostensibly in retaliation for the death of Asahel. David in sorrow and indignation, poured forth a simple dirge over the slain hero. (2 Samuel 3:33,34) + The father of Jaasiel, chief of the Benjamites in David's reign, (1 Chronicles 27:21) probably the same as the preceding.

Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869

father of light

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 51 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 53 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.

Reading settings

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Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

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