שָׁלֹשׁ
three
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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
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.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H7969 appears in the Book of 2 Kings — 18 distinct verses. 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.
2 Kings
- 2 Kings 2:17 שְׁלֹשָֽׁה adj Cardinal number ms When they urged him until he was ashamed, he said, Send. They sent therefore fifty men; and they sought three days, but didn't find him.
- 2 Kings 3:10 לִ/שְׁלֹ֨שֶׁת֙ prep + Adjective Cardinal number ms cs The king of Israel said, Alas! for Yahweh has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.
- 2 Kings 3:13 לִ/שְׁלֹ֨שֶׁת֙ prep + Adjective Cardinal number ms cs Elisha said to the king of Israel, What have I to do with you? get you to the prophets of your father, and to the prophets of your mother. The king of Israel said to him, No; for Yahweh has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab.
- 2 Kings 9:32 שְׁלֹשָׁ֖ה adj Cardinal number ms He lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? There looked out to him two or three eunuchs.
- 2 Kings 12:6 וְ/שָׁלֹ֛שׁ conj + Adjective Cardinal number fs But it was so, that in the three and twentieth year of king Jehoash the priests had not repaired the breaches of the house.
- 2 Kings 13:1 וְ/שָׁלֹשׁ֙ conj + Adjective Cardinal number fs In the three and twentieth year of Joash the son of Ahaziah, king of Judah, Jehoahaz the son of Jehu began to reign over Israel in Samaria, [and reigned] seventeen years.
- 2 Kings 13:18 שָֽׁלֹשׁ adj Cardinal number fs He said, Take the arrows; and he took them. He said to the king of Israel, Smite on the ground; and he struck thrice, and stayed.
- 2 Kings 13:19 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs The man of God was angry with him, and said, You should have struck five or six times: then had you struck Syria until you had consumed it, whereas now you shall strike Syria but thrice.
- 2 Kings 13:25 שָׁלֹ֤שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times did Joash strike him, and recovered the cities of Israel.
- 2 Kings 17:5 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years.
- 2 Kings 18:1 שָׁלֹ֔שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Now it happened in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign.
- 2 Kings 18:10 שָׁלֹ֣שׁ adj Cardinal number fs At the end of three years they took it: in the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel, Samaria was taken.
- 2 Kings 18:14 שְׁלֹ֤שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, saying, I have offended; return from me: that which you put on me will I bear. The king of Assyria appointed to Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
- 2 Kings 23:31 וְ/שָׁלֹ֤שׁ וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה conj + Adjective Cardinal number fs conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms Jehoahaz was twenty-three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem: and his mother's name was Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
- 2 Kings 24:1 שָׁלֹ֣שׁ adj Cardinal number fs In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years: then he turned and rebelled against him.
- 2 Kings 24:8 וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign; and he reigned in Jerusalem three months: and his mother's name was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.
- 2 Kings 25:17 שָׁלֹ֣שׁ adj Cardinal number fs The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a capital of brass was on it; and the height of the capital was three cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital round about, all of brass: and like to these had the second pillar with network.
- 2 Kings 25:18 שְׁלֹ֖שֶׁת adj Cardinal number ms cs The captain of the guard took Seraiah the chief priest, and Zephaniah the second priest, and the three keepers of the threshold:
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 noun שלוש centers on the idea of “three.” Debuting at Genesis 5:22, it then recurs through the corpus. It appears 381 verses across 25 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its common vocabulary. It shares a root with שלושים, שליש and שלישי. 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 H7969 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 →
- 381
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 381 distinct verses.
- 25 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 25 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #114
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 114 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 381 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Chronicles 35 verses 9%
- Numbers 33 verses 9%
- Genesis 27 verses 7%
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 381 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 153 verses · 40%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 128 verses · 34%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 100 verses · 26%
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: Three 288×, Were three 11×, Thirteenth 10×
- American Standard Version: Three 269×, Thirteenth 9×, Thirteen 8×
- Berean Standard Bible: Three 223×, Third 10×, Thirteenth 10×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Three 228×, Were 31×, And 11×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7969 across 424 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 43 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 6 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7969 across 424 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 57 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 H7969 across 343 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 33 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 86 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7969 across 369 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 27 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 79 further occurrences.
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.
- three, triad
Word origin
Origin: a primitive number
Forms in the corpus
The 122 distinct written forms H7969 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 62 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7969, 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
- שלושים shᵉlôwshîym H7970 thirty
- שליש shâlîysh H7991 officer
- שלישי shᵉlîyshîy H7992 third
- תלת tᵉlâth H8532 three
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 360 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 381 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
- Genesis 5:22
- Exodus 2:2
- Leviticus 12:4
- Numbers 1:23
- Deuteronomy 4:41
- Joshua 1:11
- Judges 1:20
- 1 Samuel 1:24
- 2 Samuel 2:18
- 1 Kings 2:11
- 2 Kings 2:17
- 1 Chronicles 2:3
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.
