רִקְמָה
embroidered
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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Dual
- Exactly two — for natural pairs and some measures of time.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 8 times (67%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 times (17%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute 1 time (8%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H7553 appears — 11 distinct verses across 4 books. 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.
Judges 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Ezekiel 8 verses
- Ezekiel 16:10 רִקְמָ֔ה n c fs I clothed you also with embroidered work, and shod you with sealskin, and I girded you about with fine linen, and covered you with silk.
- Ezekiel 16:13 וְ/רִקְמָ֔ה conj + n c fs Thus was you decked with gold and silver; and your clothing was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered work; you ate fine flour, and honey, and oil; and you were exceeding beautiful, and you did prosper to royal estate.
- Ezekiel 16:18 רִקְמָתֵ֖/ךְ n c fs cs + sfx pers 2fs and you took your embroidered garments, and covered them, and did set my oil and my incense before them.
- Ezekiel 17:3 הָֽ/רִקְמָ֑ה ptcl def.art + n c fs and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: A great eagle with great wings and long feathers, full of feathers, which had various colors, came to Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar:
- Ezekiel 26:16 רִקְמָתָ֖/ם n c fs cs + sfx pers 3mp Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones, and lay aside their robes, and strip off their embroidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with trembling; they shall sit on the ground, and shall tremble every moment, and be astonished at you.
- Ezekiel 27:7 בְּ/רִקְמָ֤ה prep + n c fs Of fine linen with embroidered work from Egypt was your sail, that it might be to you for an ensign; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was your awning.
- Ezekiel 27:16 וְ/רִקְמָ֤ה conj + n c fs Syria was your merchant by reason of the multitude of your handiworks: they traded for your wares with emeralds, purple, and embroidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and rubies.
- Ezekiel 27:24 וְ/רִקְמָ֔ה conj + n c fs These were your traffickers in choice wares, in wrappings of blue and embroidered work, and in chests of rich clothing, bound with cords and made of cedar, among your merchandise.
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.
At its core, רקמה (riqmâh) means “embroidered.” The word gravitates to Ezekiel (73%), then Judges and 1 Chronicles. It turns up in 11 verses across 4 books, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Judges 5:30. It clusters with רקם and רקם under a shared root. Dig into 11-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7553 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ezekiel 8 verses 73%
- Judges 1 verse 9%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 9%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 82%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 18%
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: Broidered work 4×, Broidered 2×
- American Standard Version: Broidered work 5×, Broidered 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Embroidered 4×, Embroidered work 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Embroidered 2×, Embroidered clothes 2×, Embroidery 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7553 across 12 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7553 across 12 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7553 across 11 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7553 across 12 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.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- variegated stuff, embroidered
Word origin
n.f. variegated stuff (woven or embroidered);—abs. ר׳ Ju 5:30 +; sf. רִקְמָתֵךְ Ez 16:18, -תָם 26:16; du. רִקְמָתַיִם Ju 5:30; pl. רְקָמוֹת ψ 45:15;—(piece of) variegated stuff, Ju 5:30(×2), for garments Ez 16:10, 13; 27:16, 24 ψ 45:15; explicitly, בִּגְדֵי ר׳ Ez 16:18; 26:16; ר׳ appar. = variegated work 27:7; fig. of variegated plumage 17:3; of variegated stone 1 Ch 29:2.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רקם (râqam) (H7551) — to variegate.
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.
רִקְמָה
- (b. h.) = רֶקֶם I, embroidered garment. Lam. R. to I, 1, a. e., v. אַפִּיקִילְטָא.
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 11 distinct written forms H7553 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/רִקְמָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:13 | 2 |
| בְּ/רִקְמָ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 27:7 | 1 |
| הָֽ/רִקְמָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 17:3 | 1 |
| וְ/רִקְמָ֗ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 29:2 | 1 |
| וְ/רִקְמָ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 27:16 | 1 |
| לִ/רְקָמוֹת֮ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 45:14 | 1 |
| רִקְמָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 5:30 | 1 |
| רִקְמָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:10 | 1 |
| רִקְמָתֵ֖/ךְ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 16:18 | 1 |
| רִקְמָתַ֖יִם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Dual, Absolute | Judges 5:30 | 1 |
| רִקְמָתָ֖/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Ezekiel 26:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7553, 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
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 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
