שְׁכַח
to find
‘to find’ 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 Hothpaal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 9 distinct
- Verb, Hothpaal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 5 times (28%)
- Verb, Hothpaal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (17%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural 2 times (11%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct 2 times (11%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (11%)
- Verb, Hothpaal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (6%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (6%)
+1 more form (1 occurrence)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 18 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H7912 appears — 15 distinct verses across 2 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.
Ezra 4 verses
- Ezra 4:15 וּ֠/תְהַשְׁכַּח conj + Hiphil impf 2ms that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers: so shall you find in the book of the records, and know that this city is a rebellious city, and hurtful to kings and provinces, and that they have moved sedition within the same of old time; for which cause was this city laid waste.
- Ezra 4:19 וְ/הַשְׁכַּ֔חוּ conj + Hiphil pf 3mp I decreed, and search has been made, and it is found that this city of old time has made insurrection against kings, and that rebellion and sedition have been made therein.
- Ezra 6:2 וְ/הִשְׁתְּכַ֣ח conj + Hothpaal pf 3ms There was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of Media, a scroll, and therein was thus written for a record:
- Ezra 7:16 תְהַשְׁכַּ֔ח Hiphil impf 2ms and all the silver and gold that you shall find in all the province of Babylon, with the freewill-offering of the people, and of the priests, offering willingly for the house of their God which is in Jerusalem;
Daniel 11 verses
- Daniel 2:25 הַשְׁכַּ֤חַת Hiphil pf 1cs Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste, and said thus to him, I have found a man of the children of the captivity of Judah, who will make known to the king the interpretation.
- Daniel 2:35 הִשְׁתֲּכַ֣ח Hothpaal pf 3ms Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them: and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
- Daniel 5:11 הִשְׁתְּכַ֣חַת Hothpaal pf 3fs There is a man in your kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of your father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were found in him; and the king Nebuchadnezzar your father, the king, [I say], your father, made him master of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers;
- Daniel 5:12 הִשְׁתְּכַ֤חַת Hothpaal pf 3fs because an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and showing of dark sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.
- Daniel 5:14 הִשְׁתְּכַ֥חַת Hothpaal pf 3fs I have heard of you, that the spirit of the gods is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you.
- Daniel 5:27 וְ/הִשְׁתְּכַ֥חַתְּ conj + Hothpaal pf 2ms TEKEL; you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.
- Daniel 6:4 לְ/הַשְׁכָּחָ֥ה לְ/הַשְׁכָּחָ֗ה הִשְׁתְּכַ֖חַת prep + Hiphil inf.cs prep + Hiphil inf.cs Hothpaal pf 3fs Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find no occasion nor fault, because he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.
- Daniel 6:5 נְהַשְׁכַּ֛ח הַשְׁכַּ֥חְנָֽה Hiphil impf 1cp Hiphil pf 1cp Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.
- Daniel 6:11 וְ/הַשְׁכַּ֖חוּ conj + Hiphil pf 3mp Then these men assembled together, and found Daniel making petition and supplication before his God.
- Daniel 6:22 הִשְׁתְּכַ֣חַת Hothpaal pf 3fs My God has sent his angel, and has shut the lions' mouths, and they have not hurt me; because as before him innocence was found in me; and also before you, O king, have I done no hurt.
- Daniel 6:23 הִשְׁתְּכַ֣ח Hothpaal pf 3ms Then was the king exceeding glad, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.
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.
The Hebrew verb שכח centers on the idea of “to find.” Daniel dominates its distribution — 11 of 15 verses. Spanning 15 verses in 2 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at Ezra 4:15, it then recurs through the corpus. The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. Dig into 15-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7912 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 15 verses · 100%
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: Was found 5×, Find 3×, Found 2×
- American Standard Version: Was found 4×, Find 3×, Were found 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Was found 3×, Find 2×, Found 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Was found 4×, Find 3×, Found 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7912 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H7912 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H7912 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7912 across 20 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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
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 1 sense 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.
Hithpeel
- . be found
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
[ שְׁכַח ] vb. Haph. find
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שכח (shâkach) (H7911) — to forget.
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.
שָׁכַח
- [to sink,] to forget, discard. Ber. 32ᵇ (ref. to Is. XLIX, 14) אדם … אתה עזבתני ושְׁכַחְתָּנִי if a man marries a woman after abandoning his first wife, he remembers the doings of his first wife, but thou hast abandoned me and also forgotten me. Ib. כלום אֶשְׁכַּח עולות וכ׳ will I ever forget the burnt-offerings of rams and the first born that thou didst offer &c.? Ib. שמא תִשְׁכַּח … סיני wilt thou forget what I did at Sinai? Peah V, 7 העומר ששְׁכָחוּהוּ … ולא ש׳ וכ׳ a sheaf which the laborers overlooked in collecting, but the employer had not overlooked. Ib. VII, 1 ושְׁכָחוֹ and he forgot it (left it on the tree). Ab. III, 8 כל השׁוֹכֵחַ וכ׳, v. מִשְׁנָה. Midd. II, 5 שָׁכַחְתִּי מה וכ׳ I forgot what purpose it served; Yoma 16ᵃ; a. v. fr.—Part. pass. שָׁכוּחַ; f. שְׁכוּחָה, a) (cmp. זָכוּר) forgetting. Y. Sabb. VI, 7ᵈ והיא ש׳ and she may forget herself, v. שַׁחֲצָנִית.—b) forgotten. B. Mets. 11ᵃ ש׳ מעיקרו a sheaf forgotten at the start (overlooked in collecting); זכור ולבסוף ש׳, v. זָכַר. Ber. l. c. (ref. to Is. l. c.) היינו עזובה היינו ש׳ is not abandoned the same as forgotten? (Ms. O. עֲזִיבָה … שְׁכִיחָה …). e.g. Isaiah 49:14
- 1. same. Y. Ber. V, 9ᵃ top לא במהרה הוא מְשַׁכֵּחַ will not easily forget it. Snh. 99ᵃ כל … ומְשַׁכְּחָהּ וכ׳ he who studied the Law and neglects it (fails to review it) is like a woman that gives birth and buries; a. e.
- 2. to cause forgetting. Ab. II, 2 שיגיעת … מְשַׁכַּחַת עון (or מַשְׁכַּחַת) the employment of the mind in both of them causes man to forget sin. Tosef. Sot. III, 12 אתם מְשַׁכְּחִין … אני אֲשַׁכֵּחַ וכ׳ you make the law of free trade forgotten among you, I will cause you to be forgotten in the world; Snh. 109ᵃ, a. e. באו ונְשַׁכֵּחַ וכ׳, v. רֶגֶל; a. fr.
- same. Bets. 15ᵇ להַשְׁכִּיחוֹ, v. זָכַר. Ab. l. c., v. supra; a. e.
- , Nithpa. נִשְׁתַּכֵּחַ to be forgotten. Tem. 14ᵇ מוטב … ואל תִּשְׁתַּכֵּחַ וכ׳ (some ed. תִּשָּׁבֵחַ) it is better that a law be uprooted (disregarded) than that the Law be forgotten in Israel. Ib. 15ᵇ שלשה … נִשְׁתַּכְּחוּ וכ׳ three thousand traditional rules were forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses. Ib. 16ᵃ אף … נִשְׁתַּכְּחָה וכ׳ also the rule concerning a sin offering whose owner died (before it was brought) was forgotten during &c. Ib. שלא יִשְׁתַּכֵּחַ … מלבי that what I have learned be not forgotten out of my mind. Pes. 54ᵇ על המת שישתכח מן הלב that the dead should be forgotten out of mind; a. fr.
שְׁכַח
- I ch. (Hebraism) same. Y. B. Kam. IV, 4ᵇ עד דשַׁכְחוּן כולן, v. סוּלָּמָא
- same. Y. Erub. I, 18ᵈ top [read:] דאין … ולא מְשַכַּח יתיה that he may not have forgotten it, if Rab should ask him; a. e.
- to be forgotten. Tem. 15ᵇ דאי׳ להו א׳ וכ׳ that which they forgot remained forgotten &c. B. Mets. 85ᵃ יתיב … דלִשְׁתַּכַּח גמרא וכ׳ he fasted … praying that he may forget the Babylonian teaching. Ib.ᵇ אי מִשְׁתַּכְּחַת תורה וכ׳ (Keth. 103ᵇ אם נשתכחה וכ׳), v. פִּלְפּוּלָא. Ib. עבדי … דלא תִשְׁתַּכַּח וכ׳ I brought it about that the Law be not forgotten &c.; a. e.
שְׁכַח II
- Af. אַשְׁכַּח (הַשְׁכַּח) (preced.) [to uncover,] to find. Targ. Ps. XXXVI, 3 למַשְׁכַּח (ed. Wil. למִ׳). Targ. Koh. I, 17 (ed. Vien. למִ׳). Ib. VIII, 17 (Pe interch. with Af.). Targ. Gen. II, 20. Ib. VIII, 9 (Y. some ed. הַשְׁ׳). Targ. O. ib. XLI, 38 הנַשְׁכַּח ed. Berl. (ed. Vien. a. oth. היִשְׁ׳, corr. acc.); Y. הנִשְׁ׳; a. fr.—Gitt. 56ᵇ ליקלויה … דלא לַשְׁכְּחֵיה וכ׳ burn this man (me, Titus), and scatter the ashes …, that the God of the Jews may not find him and place him before judgment. Y. Erub. I, 18ᵈ top א׳ תני וכ׳ he found that it was taught (in the Boraitha), Rabbi says &c. Yeb. 110ᵇ אַשְׁכְּחִתֵיה לרב וכ׳ I found Rab A. and &c. Ab. Zar. 10ᵃ, a. fr. נפק דק וא׳ וכ׳ he went forth, investigated, and found that &c. Macc. 21ᵇ מי מַשְׁכַּחַת וכ׳ wouldst thou have found the jewel beneath?; B. Mets. 17ᵇ לא משכחת, v. דְּלֵי. Gitt. 68ᵃ אַשְׁכְּחֵיה חמרא he found it to be wine; Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXVIII, 45; Yalk. Kings 182 אשכח. Y. Ḥag. II, 77ᵇ וי דמובדין ולא מַשְׁכְּחִין woe for those who lose and do not find (who suffer an irretrievable loss)!; a. fr.—Macc. l. c., a. fr. היכי משכחת לה how wilt thou find it, i.e. to what practical case can this be applied? Pes. 7ᵃ בשלמא שבת משכחת לה וכ׳ as to the Sabbath, there may be a case, as, for instance, when the fourteenth day occurs on a Sabbath. Ab. Zar. 40ᵇ; a. v. fr.
- to be found. Targ. Ex. XXI, 16. Ib. XXII, 1; 3; a. fr.—Targ. Y. I Deut. XXXIV, 8 הִשְׁתְּכָחוּ אכלין וכ׳ (= h. נמצא) consequently they ate &c., v. מָצָא.—B. Mets. 16ᵇ הנהו … דמִשְׁתַּכְּחֵי בשוקא deeds of purchase that were found in the street. Sabb. 90ᵃ; Nidd. 62ᵃ מִשְׁתַּכַּח, v. אַשְׁלְגָא. Snh. 111ᵃ; Ex. R. s. 6, a. e. ולא מִשְׁתַּכְּחִין and are not found again (cannot be replaced), v. חֲבַל II; a. fr.
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 17 distinct written forms H7912 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 H7912, 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
Shares the same root
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 14 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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.
