אֲבַד
to perish
‘to perish’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil 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”).
- Hophal
- The passive counterpart of the Hiphil (“he was caused to…”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- 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”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
4 distinct verses where H7 appears in the Hiphil stem, across 1 book. 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.
Daniel 4 verses
- Daniel 2:12 לְ/ה֣וֹבָדָ֔ה prep + Hiphil inf.cs For this cause the king was angry and very furious, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:18 יְהֹֽבְדוּן֙ Hiphil impf 3mp that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should nor perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:24 לְ/הוֹבָדָ֖ה תְּהוֹבֵ֔ד prep + Hiphil inf.cs Hiphil impf 2ms Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon; he went and said thus to him: Don't destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show to the king the interpretation.
- Daniel 7:26 וּ/לְ/הוֹבָדָ֖ה conj + prep + Hiphil inf.cs But the judgment shall be set, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end.
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.
“to perish” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb אבד (ʼăbad). More than three-quarters of its appearances fall in Daniel. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 6 verses — uncommon. First canonically at Jeremiah 10:11, it enters the text early. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Peal, Haphel, and more). The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H7 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,835
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,835 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 83%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 17%
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: Destroy 4×
- American Standard Version: Destroy 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Destroy 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Destroy 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H7 across 7 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H7 across 7 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H7 across 6 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H7 across 10 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.
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 Peal (the basic Aramaic stem, parallel to Qal), Haphel (the causative Aramaic stem, parallel to Hiphil), and Hophal (the passive of Hiphil).
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 3 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.
Peal
- . they shall perish, pass away.
Haphel
- . destroy
Hophal
- . be destroyed
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
Derived from אבד (ʼâbad) (H6) — to perish.
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.
אָבַד
- , v. אבב) to be pressed, go around in despair (v. Prov. XXXI, 6; Deut. XXVI, 6) to be given up, whence e.g. Proverbs 31:6
- 1. to be lost, perish; to be beyond recognition. Sifré Deut. 301 (ref. to Deut. XXVI, 5) לא ירד … אלא לאובד (read לוֹבֵד or לֶאֱבוֹד; Yalk. Deut. a. l. לאבדם prob. לאַבְרָּן; Ms. Zer. Abr. 3 לֵיאָבֵר) Jacob went to Aram with no hope but to perish (be a slave &c.). Ohol. XVII, 3 a field שא׳ בו קבר in which there is a grave that cannot be located. Keth. XIII, 7 אָבְדָה דרך וכ׳ the path to his field cannot be traced. Gen. R. s. 91 אבידה א׳ לנו we have lost something; a. fr. e.g. Deuteronomy 26:5
- 2. to lose. Ib. ואנו שאָבַדְנוּ ר׳ ס׳ and we who have lost (mourn for) R. S.; a. fr.—Part. pass. אָבוּד lost, irretrievable, perishing, decayed. Keth. 108ᵃ על הא׳ on a contribution to the Temple which has been lost on the road. Y. Shebi. IX, 38ᵈ top מאיליהן הן אֲבוּדִין they perish of themselves (they decay naturally); a. fr.
- to be lost, perish. Keth. 104ᵃ; a. fr. Sifré Deut. 301 לֵיאָבֵד, v. supra.
- 1. to waste, lose, forfeit, destroy. Ned. 33ᵇ אי׳ את מעותיו he wasted his money, (cannot reclaim it). Keth. XIII, 6 אי׳ את זכותו he forfeited his claim. Ab. Zar. 55ᵃ אנו נְאַבֵּד וכ׳ shall we give up our honest dealing? Ib. IV, 7 יְאַבֵּד עולמו shall He destroy His world? Ḥag. 3ᵃ ובקשתם לאַבְּדָהּ ממני and you wanted to deprive me of it? Ib. 4ᵃ זה המְאַבֵּד וכ׳ one who destroys what is given to him.—א׳ עצמו לדעת to commit suicide wilfully. Gen. R. s. 82; a. fr.
- 2. to drop from memory, to forget. Aboth V, 12; a. e.
אֲבַּד
- to be lost. Targ. I Sam. IX, 3; a. fr.—Snh. 111ᵃ; a. fr.—Y. Pes. IX, 37ᵃ כאָבִיד הוא it is to be looked upon as lost.
- to destroy. Targ. II Kings, XIX, 18; a. fr.
- 1. = Pa. Targ. Deut. XXVI, 5; a. fr.—Y. Kidd. III, 64ᶜ bot. אובדתא חיין וכ׳ thou hast ruined this man’s (my) life. Gen. R. s. 56 אובדת ליבך thou hast lost thy wits; a. fr.
- 2. to be lost, to go to ruin. Targ. Ps. XLI, 6; a. e.—Y. Ḥag. II, 77ᵇ ווי דמובדין alas for the lost (deceased)! Y. M. Kat. I, beg. 80ᵃ ויובדן and decay.
- to be lost. Lev. R. s. 34 מִתְאַבְּדִין if they should be lost.—מִתְּבִיד = מִתְאֲבִיד Pes. 5ᵇ; a. e. [Lam. R., to IV, 21 לאיבדא, read לאיעבדא, v. עֲבַד.]
אָבֵד
- perishable, irretrievable. דבר הא׳ a business which cannot be postponed without irretrievable loss. M. Kat. 11ᵃ; a. fr.
יְבַד
- Y. Shebi. IX, 38ᵈ אפי׳ צפור … לא יָבְדָּא even a bird perishes not without the will of God; [Gen. R. s. 79, a. e. מתצדא, מצדיא, v. צדי; Midr. Till. to Ps. XVII אתיא (ed. Bub. אתאי); read: אתציד;] Esth. R. to I, 9; Koh. R. to X, 8 יברח (corr. יָבְדָּה).
- to ruin. Targ. Prov. XII, 4 מְיַבְּדָא (ed. Wil. מֵיבְדָא).
- , v. אֲבַד
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 7 distinct written forms H7 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/הוּבַ֣ד | Verb, Hophal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Daniel 7:11 | 1 |
| וּ/לְ/הוֹבָדָ֖ה | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Daniel 7:26 | 1 |
| יְהֹֽבְדוּן֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Daniel 2:18 | 1 |
| יֵאבַ֧דוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Jeremiah 10:11 | 1 |
| לְ/ה֣וֹבָדָ֔ה | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Daniel 2:12 | 1 |
| לְ/הוֹבָדָ֖ה | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Construct | Daniel 2:24 | 1 |
| תְּהוֹבֵ֔ד | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Daniel 2:24 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H7, 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
- אבד ʼôbêd H8 destruction
- אבדה ʼăbêdâh H9 lost thing
- אבדן ʼabdân H12 destruction
- אבדן ʼobdan H13 destruction
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 7 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
