שִׁבְיָה
captivity
‘captivity’ 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 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
- Both
- Attested as both masculine and feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute 9 times (75%)
- Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct 3 times (25%)
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 H7633 appears — 12 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.
Deuteronomy 3 verses
- Deuteronomy 21:11 בַּ/שִּׁבְיָ֔ה prep det + n c bs and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire to her, and would take her to you as wife;
- Deuteronomy 21:13 שִׁבְיָ֜/הּ n c bs cs + sfx pers 3fs and she shall put the clothing of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in your house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that you shall go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.
- Deuteronomy 32:42 וְ/שִׁבְיָ֔ה conj + n c bs I will make my arrows drunk with blood, My sword shall devour flesh; With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the head of the leaders of the enemy.
2 Chronicles 7 verses
- 2 Chronicles 6:37 שִׁבְיָ/ם֙ n c bs cs + sfx pers 3mp yet if they shall repent themselves in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done perversely, and have dealt wickedly;
- 2 Chronicles 6:38 שִׁבְיָ֖/ם n c bs cs + sfx pers 3mp if they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, where they have carried them captive, and pray toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, and the city which you have chosen, and toward the house which I have built for your name:
- 2 Chronicles 28:5 שִׁבְיָ֣ה n c bs Therefore Yahweh his God delivered him into the hand of the king of Syria; and they struck him, and carried away of his a great multitude of captives, and brought them to Damascus. He was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with a great slaughter.
- 2 Chronicles 28:11 הַ/שִּׁבְיָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c bs Now hear me therefore, and send back the captives, that you have taken captive of your brothers; for the fierce wrath of Yahweh is on you.
- 2 Chronicles 28:13 הַ/שִּׁבְיָה֙ ptcl def.art + n c bs and said to them, You shall not bring in the captives here: for you purpose that which will bring on us a trespass against Yahweh, to add to our sins and to our trespass; for our trespass is great, and there is fierce wrath against Israel.
- 2 Chronicles 28:14 הַ/שִּׁבְיָה֙ ptcl def.art + n c bs So the armed men left the captives and the spoil before the princes and all the assembly.
- 2 Chronicles 28:15 בַ/שִּׁבְיָ֗ה prep det + n c bs The men who have been mentioned by name rose up, and took the captives, and with the spoil clothed all who were naked among them, and arrayed them, and shod them, and gave them to eat and to drink, and anointed them, and carried all the feeble of them on donkeys, and brought them to Jericho, the city of palm trees, to their brothers: then they returned to Samaria.
Nehemiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 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.
שביה (shibyâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “captivity.” It clusters heavily in 2 Chronicles, which alone accounts for 58% of its uses. It turns up in 12 verses across 4 books, an uncommon footprint. It first appears in Deuteronomy 21:11. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7633 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 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 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 7 verses 58%
- Deuteronomy 3 verses 25%
- Nehemiah 1 verse 8%
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 12 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 25%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 8%
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: Captives 7×
- American Standard Version: Captives 4×, Captivity 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Captives 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Captives 5×, Captivity 4×, Among the captives 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7633 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H7633 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H7633 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H7633 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 2 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. state of captivity, Je 48:46 (of בָּנוֹת, ‖ שְׁבִי of בָּנִים); אֶרֶץ שׁ׳ Ne 3:36. e.g. Jeremiah 48:46
- 2. body of captives, Dt 21:11; 32:42 (‖ חָלָל), 2 Ch 28:13, 14, 15; object of שָׁבָה, v 5 (שׁ׳ גדולה), הָשִׁיבוּ הַשּׁ׳ אֲשֶׁר שְׁבִיתֶם v 11. e.g. Deuteronomy 21:11
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.f. captivity, captives (coll.), cf. שְׁבִי;—always abs. שׁ׳;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שבי (shᵉbîy) (H7628) — captivity.
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.
שִׁבְיָה
- captivity, capture. Kidd. 21ᵇ (ref. to Deut. XX, 11) בשעת ש׳ (if you see and desire her) בשעת ש׳ at the time of making captives; Sifré Deut. 211. e.g. Deuteronomy 20:11
שִׁבְיָה ²
- ch., v. שְׁבִי ch.
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 H7633 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/שִּׁבְיָה֙ | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 28:13 | 2 |
| בַ/שִּׁבְיָ֗ה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 28:15 | 1 |
| בַּ/שִּׁבְיָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 21:11 | 1 |
| בַּ/שִּׁבְיָֽה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 48:46 | 1 |
| הַ/שִּׁבְיָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 28:11 | 1 |
| וְ/שִׁבְיָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 32:42 | 1 |
| שִׁבְיָ/ם֙ | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct | 2 Chronicles 6:37 | 1 |
| שִׁבְיָ֖/ם | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct | 2 Chronicles 6:38 | 1 |
| שִׁבְיָ֜/הּ | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct | Deuteronomy 21:13 | 1 |
| שִׁבְיָ֣ה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 28:5 | 1 |
| שִׁבְיָֽה | Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute | Nehemiah 4:4 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
