רָפַשׂ
to tread
‘to tread’ 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
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H7515 appears in the Book of Ezekiel — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 32:2 וַ/תִּרְפֹּ֖ס conj + Qal wimpf 2ms Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, You were likened to a young lion of the nations: yet are you as a monster in the seas; and you did break forth with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.
- Ezekiel 34:18 תִּרְפֹּשֽׂוּ/ן Qal impf 2mp + sfx n Seems it a small thing to you to have fed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture? and to have drunk of the clear waters, but you must foul the residue with your feet?
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.
“to tread” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb רפש (râphas). The Hebrew Bible uses it only 3 verses. It clusters heavily in Ezekiel, which alone accounts for 67% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Proverbs 25:26. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). See the sense tree, 3-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7515 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.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
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) 2 verses · 67%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 33%
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: Fouledst 1×, Is as a troubled 1×, Ye must foul 1×
- American Standard Version: Fouledst 1×, Troubled 1×, Ye must foul 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Like a muddied 1×, Muddying 1×, Must you also muddy 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Muddied by trampling 1×, Muddy 1×, You must muddy 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7515 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7515 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7515 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7515 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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. This entry also uses Hithpael (reflexive or reciprocal).
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.
Qal
- c. acc. rivers
Niphal
- . a fountain befouled.
Hithpael
- . (stamp oneself down, then fig.) humble thyself
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
רָפַס, רָפַשׂ vb. stamp, tread, foul by stamping, treading
— 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.
רֶפֶשׁ
- cmp. next wds.) mud. Midr. Till. to Ps. XVIII, 8 ועושה אותן טיט ומיני ר׳ and changed them into clay and all sorts of mud.
רָפַשׂ
- (b. h.) = רָפַס, to tread, stamp, press. Ex. R. s. 1522 ר׳ הענבים ובעט ראשון ראשון he packed the grapes and stamped one instalment after the other (thus making room for the grapes still in the vineyard).—Trnsf. to conquer, vanquish. Lam. R. to I, 13 כמה רפשים עשית עד שרְפַשְׂתִּיו בידיך (not עשיתי) how many conquests didst thou attempt, before I brought him within thy power?; Midr. Sam. ch. XXIV כמה רפשים עשיתה … עד שלא רפשתיו בידך (not בידו). Tanḥ. Vayishl. 4 לשר הגדול ר׳ he vanquished the great chief (archangel). Ib. 2 נטל … ורְפָשׂוֹ (not ורפש) he seized the archangel and conquered him. Tanḥ. Vayḥi 6 ידי … שרָפְשָׂה לשר וכ׳ dost thou attempt to remove my hand which vanquished the chief of the angels?; Pesik. R. s. 3 והאיך זו תפשה לשר וכ׳, read: והא ידי זו רפשה וכ׳.
- , with עצמו, to let one’s self be trodden upon, to surrender. Cant. R. to III, 6 וה׳ עצמו תחתיו he surrendered himself to him; Gen. R. s. 77 וה׳ עצמו לפניו; Yalk. ib. 132 והרעיש (corr. acc.).
רְפַשׂ I
- Gen. R. s. 93 רמז … ר׳ חד רפש וכ׳ he motioned to Menasseh, and he stamped once with his foot, and the palace shook; Yalk. ib. 150.
- to crush, break clods. B. Mets. 95ᵇ Ar., v. רְפֵי.
- to be shaken, v. רְפַס.
רֶפֶשׂ
- (preced.)
- 1. stamping; trnsf. conquest.—Pl. רְפָשִׂים. Lam. R. to I, 13; Midr. Sam. ch. XXIV, v. רָפַשׂ.
- 2. stamped dung. B. Kam. 30ᵃ לא יהא אלא כרִפְשׂוֹ is this not the same as if he had deposited and stamped his dung (in the public road)?
רְפַשׂ II
- , stamping. Gen. R. s. 93 חד ר׳ (some ed. רְפֵישׂ), v. רְפַשׂ I. Ib. דין ר׳ מן דבית אבא this stamp of the foot is peculiar to my father’s household; Yalk. ib. 150.
*רְפַשׁ
- (cmp. Assyr. rapâsu, Del. Assyr. Handw. 626) to spread. Targ. Y. Num. XI, 31 Ar. a. Levita (ed. שרא; h. text ויטש).
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 3 distinct written forms H7515 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| וַ/תִּרְפֹּ֖ס | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 32:2 | 1 |
| נִ֭רְפָּשׂ | Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 25:26 | 1 |
| תִּרְפֹּשֽׂוּ/ן | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Ezekiel 34:18 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7515, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
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.
