אָרַשׂ
to betroth
‘to betroth’ 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 Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- 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
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 3 times (27%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 3 times (27%)
- Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (18%)
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (9%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H781 appears — 10 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Deuteronomy 6 verses
- Deuteronomy 20:7 אֵרַ֤שׂ Piel pf 3ms What man is there who has pledged to be married a wife, and has not taken her? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.
- Deuteronomy 22:23 מְאֹרָשָׂ֖ה Pual ptcp.pass fs If there be a young lady who is a virgin pledged to be married to a husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
- Deuteronomy 22:25 הַ/מְאֹ֣רָשָׂ֔ה ptcl def.art + Pual ptcp.pass fs But if the man find the lady who is pledged to be married in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her; then the man only who lay with her shall die:
- Deuteronomy 22:27 הַ/מְאֹ֣רָשָׂ֔ה ptcl def.art + Pual ptcp.pass fs for he found her in the field, the pledged to be married lady cried, and there was none to save her.
- Deuteronomy 22:28 אֹרָ֔שָׂה Pual pf 3fs If a man find a lady who is a virgin, who is not pledged to be married, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;
- Deuteronomy 28:30 תְאָרֵ֗שׂ Piel impf 2ms You shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her: you shall build a house, and you shall not dwell therein: you shall plant a vineyard, and shall not use the fruit of it.
2 Samuel 1 verse
Hosea 2 verses
- Hosea 2:19 וְ/אֵרַשְׂתִּ֥י/ךְ וְ/אֵרַשְׂתִּ֥י/ךְ conj + Piel wpf 1cs + sfx pers 2fs conj + Piel wpf 1cs + sfx pers 2fs I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
- Hosea 2:20 וְ/אֵרַשְׂתִּ֥י/ךְ conj + Piel wpf 1cs + sfx pers 2fs I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; And you shall know Yahweh.
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, ארש (ʼâras) means “to betroth.” The word gravitates to Deuteronomy (60%), then Hosea and Exodus. It turns up in 10 verses across 4 books, an uncommon footprint. Scripture first uses it in Exodus 22:16. The verb spans 2 stems, from Piel to Pual. Dig into 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H781 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 6 verses 60%
- Hosea 2 verses 20%
- Exodus 1 verse 10%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 70%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 30%
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: Betrothed 2×, Is not betrothed 2×
- American Standard Version: Betrothed 2×, Is not betrothed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: I will betroth you 3×, Pledged in marriage 3×, Betrothed 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Engaged 5×, I will betroth you 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H781 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H781 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H781 across 11 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 H781 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 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 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.
Piel
- Pf. 3 ms. אֵרַשׂ Dt 20:7; אֵרַשְׂתִּי 2 S 3:14; sf. אֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ Ho 2:21(×2), 22; Impf. 2 ms. תְּאָרֵשׂ Dt 28:30;—betroth (subj. man) obj. woman, אִשָּׁה Dt 20:7; 28:30; sq. ב of price paid to father & ל of husband 2 S 3:14; ב of gift to bride & ל of husband Ho 2:21, 22, where fig. of Yahweh’s covenant mercy to Israel. e.g. Deuteronomy 20:7
Pual
- Pf. 3 fs. אֹרָ֑שָׂה be betrothed, c. לֹא, subj. בְּתוּלָה Ex 22:15 Dt 22:28 (נער בתולה); Pt. f. מְאֹרָשָׂה Dt 22:23, where affirmed of נער בתולה (sq. ל of husband) v 25, 27 (in both subj. הַנַּעֲרָ֯). e.g. Exodus 22:15
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. betroth (Mish. ארס, Ph. ארש in n.pr., LagSem i. 50 connects with Arabic أَرْشٌ a fine, lit. pay the price, & so gain the right of possession; cf. Aramaic אָרִיס one who farms land; Assyrian mirsu, tribute, Zehnpf BAS i. 518)—only Pi. Pu.;
— 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.
*אָרַשׁ
- Ps. XXI, to weave, arrange, trnsf. to plan. Gen. R. s. 9 קודם עד שלא יֶאֱרַשׁ וכ׳ before yet my tongue prepares a word. [In later liturgic poëtry ארש is used in the sense of meditation, devotion.]
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 8 distinct written forms H781 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/אֵרַשְׂתִּ֥י/ךְ | Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Hosea 2:19 | 3 |
| הַ/מְאֹ֣רָשָׂ֔ה | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 22:25 | 2 |
| אֵרַ֣שְׂתִּי | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | 2 Samuel 3:14 | 1 |
| אֵרַ֤שׂ | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 20:7 | 1 |
| אֹרָ֔שָׂה | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Deuteronomy 22:28 | 1 |
| אֹרָ֖שָׂה | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Exodus 22:16 | 1 |
| מְאֹרָשָׂ֖ה | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 22:23 | 1 |
| תְאָרֵ֗שׂ | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 28:30 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H781, 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 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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.
