רֶ֫מֶשׂ
creeping things
also: moving things, creeping organism fuller range ↓
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
8 verses where H7431 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Genesis. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
- Genesis 1:24 וָ/רֶ֛מֶשׂ conj + n c ms God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind," and it was so.
- Genesis 1:26 הָ/רֶ֖מֶשׂ ptcl def.art + n c ms God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
- Genesis 6:7 רֶ֖מֶשׂ n c ms Yahweh said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground; man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."
- Genesis 7:14 הָ/רֶ֛מֶשׂ ptcl def.art + n c ms they, and every animal after its kind, all the cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort.
- Genesis 7:23 רֶ֨מֶשׂ֙ n c ms Every living thing was destroyed that was on the surface of the ground, including man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.
- Genesis 8:17 הָ/רֶ֛מֶשׂ ptcl def.art + n c ms Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, cattle, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."
- Genesis 8:19 הָ/רֶ֨מֶשׂ֙ ptcl def.art + n c ms Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went forth out of the ark.
- Genesis 9:3 רֶ֨מֶשׂ֙ n c ms Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As the green herb, I have given everything to you.
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.
“creeping things” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun רמש (remes). More than half of its appearances fall in Genesis. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 17 verses — uncommon. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 1:24. Beyond “creeping things” it also covers “moving things” and “creeping organism” — see its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7431 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 10 verses · 59%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 29%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 12%
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: Creeping things 6×, Every creeping thing 4×, Creeping thing 2×
- American Standard Version: Creeping things 7×, Every creeping thing 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Crawling creature 4×, Crawling creatures 2×, Creature 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Moving creature 3×, Crawling creatures 2×, Creeper 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7431 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H7431 across 17 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 H7431 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7431 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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
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 3 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. creeping things (disting. from בְּהֵמָה, חַיָּה, עוֹף, צִפּוֹר, דָּג) Ho 2:20; 1 K 5:13; Ez 8:10; 38:20; Gn 1:24, 25, 26; 6:7, 20; 7:14, 23; 8:17, 19 (all P), Hb 1:14 (in sim.) ψ 148:10. e.g. Hosea 2:20
- 2. of sea animals, gliding things, ψ 104:25. e.g. Psalms 104:25
- 3. moving things, of all animals Gn 9:3 (P).—Cf. DrHast. DB Creeping Things. e.g. Genesis 9:3
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
n.m. Ez 38:20 coll. creeping things, moving things;—ר׳ abs. 1 K 5:13 +, cstr. Ho 2:20 +;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רמש (râmas) (H7430) — to creep.
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.
רֶמֶשׂ
- רמש to move, creep) creeping thing, worm, snake &c.—Pl. רְמָשִׂים. Nidd. III, 2; Snh. VIII, 2, v. שֶׁקֶץ. Yalk. Ex. 182 רְמָסִים; a. fr.
רְמַשׁ
- evening. Targ. Gen. I, 5. Targ. Ps. LXV, 9. Targ. Is. XXI, 13 (h. text עֲרָב!); a. fr.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᶜ bot. ברו׳ נחית וכ׳ in the evening he went down to the house of assembly. Ib. IV, 7ᶜ bot. יצלי דר׳ וכ׳ one may say the evening prayer (on the Sabbath), while it is still day-time; a. fr.
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 12 distinct written forms H7431 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הָ/רֶ֖מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 1:26 | 2 |
| הָ/רֶ֛מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:14 | 2 |
| הָ/רֶ֨מֶשׂ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 38:20 | 2 |
| רֶ֥מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Genesis 1:25 | 2 |
| רֶ֨מֶשׂ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:23 | 2 |
| וְ/רֶ֖מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Hosea 2:18 | 1 |
| וָ/רֶ֛מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 1:24 | 1 |
| כְּ/רֶ֖מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Habakkuk 1:14 | 1 |
| רֶ֖מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 6:7 | 1 |
| רֶ֝֗מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 148:10 | 1 |
| רֶ֤מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 8:10 | 1 |
| רֶ֭מֶשׂ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 104:25 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 16 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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.
