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.
18 verses where H7969 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Exodus. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
- Exodus 2:2 שְׁלֹשָׁ֥ה adj Cardinal number ms The woman conceived, and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.
- Exodus 6:18 שָׁלֹ֧שׁ adj Cardinal number fs The sons of Kohath: Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel; and the years of the life of Kohath were one hundred thirty-three years.
- Exodus 7:7 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
- Exodus 21:11 שְׁלָ֨שׁ adj Cardinal number fs If he doesn't do these three things for her, she may go free without paying any money.
- Exodus 23:14 שָׁלֹ֣שׁ adj Cardinal number fs "You shall observe a feast to me three times a year.
- Exodus 23:17 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh.
- Exodus 25:32 שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁה֙ adj Cardinal number ms conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms There shall be six branches going out of its sides: three branches of the lampstand out of its one side, and three branches of the lampstand out of its other side;
- Exodus 25:33 שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה adj Cardinal number ms conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms three cups made like almond blossoms in one branch, a bud and a flower; and three cups made like almond blossoms in the other branch, a bud and a flower, so for the six branches going out of the lampstand;
- Exodus 27:1 וְ/שָׁלֹ֥שׁ conj + Adjective Cardinal number fs "You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long, and five cubits broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and its height shall be three cubits.
- Exodus 27:14 שְׁלֹשָׁ֔ה שְׁלֹשָֽׁה adj Cardinal number ms adj Cardinal number ms The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three.
- Exodus 27:15 שְׁלֹשָׁ֔ה שְׁלֹשָֽׁה adj Cardinal number ms adj Cardinal number ms For the other side shall be hangings of fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three.
- Exodus 34:23 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord Yahweh, the God of Israel.
- Exodus 34:24 שָׁלֹ֥שׁ adj Cardinal number fs For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither shall any man desire your land when you go up to appear before Yahweh, your God, three times in the year.
- Exodus 37:18 שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁה֙ adj Cardinal number ms conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms There were six branches going out of its sides: three branches of the lampstand out of its one side, and three branches of the lampstand out of its other side:
- Exodus 37:19 שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה וּ/שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה adj Cardinal number ms conj + Adjective Cardinal number ms three cups made like almond-blossoms in one branch, a bud and a flower, and three cups made like almond-blossoms in the other branch, a bud and a flower: so for the six branches going out of the lampstand.
- Exodus 38:1 וְ/שָׁלֹ֥שׁ conj + Adjective Cardinal number fs He made the altar of burnt offering of acacia wood. It was square. Its length was five cubits, its breadth was five cubits, and its height was three cubits.
- Exodus 38:14 שְׁלֹשָׁ֔ה שְׁלֹשָֽׁה adj Cardinal number ms adj Cardinal number ms The hangings for the one side were fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three;
- Exodus 38:15 שְׁלֹשָׁ֔ה שְׁלֹשָֽׁה adj Cardinal number ms adj Cardinal number ms and so for the other side: on this hand and that hand by the gate of the court were hangings of fifteen cubits; their pillars three, and their sockets three.
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.
