רָקַח
to mix
‘to mix’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
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”).
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- 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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
1 distinct verse where H7543 appears in the Hiphil stem, across 1 book. 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.
Ezekiel 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.
“to mix” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb רקח (râqach). It clusters heavily in Exodus, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. It turns up in 8 verses across 5 books, an uncommon footprint. First canonically at Exodus 30:25, it enters the text early. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Pual, and more). See the sense tree, 8-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7543 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 4 verses 50%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 13%
- 2 Chronicles 1 verse 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 8 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 38%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 13%
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: Apothecary 4×
- American Standard Version: Perfumer 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Perfumer 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Ointment mixer 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7543 across 8 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7543 across 8 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7543 across 8 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 H7543 across 8 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 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 Pual (the passive of Piel).
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
- Impf. 3 ms. יִרְקַח Ex 30:33; Pt. רֹקֵחַ v 25, 35, רוֹ׳ 37:29 Ec 10:1; pl. cstr. רֹקְחֵי 1 Ch 9:30;—mix, compound, Ex 30:33 (P; כָּמֹהוּ, i.e. anything like the holy oil); pt. as subst. רֹקְחֵי הַמִּרְקַחַת 1 Ch 9:30 compounders of the ointment; as a professional name, mixer, perfumer, Ex 30:25, 35; 37:29; Ec 10:1. e.g. Exodus 30:33
Pual
- Pt. mpl. מְרֻקָּחִים 2 Ch 16:14 mixed as ointment. e.g. 2 Chronicles 16:14
Hiphil
- Inf. abs. הַרְקַח הַמֶּרְקָחָה Ez 24:10 (‖ הָתֵם), as Imv., spice the spicing (?), i.e. spice (the meat) well, but very dub., Krae proposes הָרֵק הַמָּרָק empty out the broth. e.g. Ezekiel 24:10
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. mix, or compound oil, ointment (perhaps denom.; in this case √ meaning unknown; NH has מִרְקַחַת ointment; Ph. רקח either spice-mixer (Bloch) or spice-dealer (Lzb); perhaps akin to Assyrian riḳḳu, spice, MeissnSuppl. 90, cf. rikkê, DlHWB 620);—
— 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.
רָקַח
- (b. h.) to pound spices; to spice, perfume.—Part. רוֹקֵחַ druggist, apothecary. Gen. R. s. 10, v. סַם. Koh. R. to X, 1, v. נָבע; a. e.
- same. Gen. R. l. c. Y. Bets. I, 60ᵈ חייב משם מְרַקֵּהַ (not מרקיה, מרקה) is guilty because it comes under the category of doing apothecary’s work.
רֶקַח
- preced.) apothecary’s preparation. Cant. R. to VIII, 2, v. פָּטַם.
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 7 distinct written forms H7543 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 H7543, 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
- מרקח merqâch H4840 spice
- מרקחת mirqachath H4842 ointment
- רקח reqach H7544 spice
- רקח raqqâch H7546 perfumer
- רקח raqquach H7547 ointment
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
