שְׂמֹאל
left
also: the left hand, the left side fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
2 verses where H8040 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Ezekiel. 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.
Ezekiel
- Ezekiel 16:46 שְׂמֹאולֵ֑/ךְ n c ms cs + sfx pers 2fs Your elder sister is Samaria, who dwells at your left hand, she and her daughters; and your younger sister, who dwells at your right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.
- Ezekiel 39:3 שְׂמֹאולֶ֑/ךָ n c ms cs + sfx pers 2ms and I will strike your bow out of your left hand, and will cause your arrows to fall out of your right hand.
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.
שמאול — transliterated sᵉmôʼwl — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “left.” It also covers “the left hand” and “the left side”, alongside “left” — see its full sense range. Spanning 53 verses in 22 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at Genesis 13:9, it then recurs through the corpus. From the same root come שמלה, שלמה and שמאל. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8040 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 →
- 53
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 53 distinct verses.
- 22 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 22 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #696
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 53 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 6 verses 11%
- Genesis 5 verses 9%
- Deuteronomy 5 verses 9%
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 53 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 24 verses · 45%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 15 verses · 28%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 14 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: Left 27×, Left hand 14×, Or to the left 8×
- American Standard Version: Left 22×, Left hand 13×, Or to the left 9×
- Berean Standard Bible: Left 21×, Or to the left 13×, North 8×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Left 30×, Or left 10×, Left hand 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8040 across 54 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H8040 across 54 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H8040 across 53 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 H8040 across 57 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.
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 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.
- 1. left, region on the left, Gn 13:9 (J); on the left is עַל־שׂ׳ 2 K 23:8; Ez 16:46; Zc 4:3, 11, עַל־הַשּׂ׳ 1 Ch 6:29 cf. 2 Ch 18:18, also מִשּׂ׳ (a sinistra) Ex 14:22, 29 (P), 2 S 16:6 + 7 times + מֵהַשּׂ׳ 2 Ch 3:17; Ez 1:10, לִשׂ׳; Ec 10:2, שׂ׳ alone Jb 23:9; toward the left is עַל־שׂ׳ Gn 24:49 (J), 2 S 2:21; Zc 12:6, עַל־הַשּׂ׳ 2 S 2:19, שׂ׳ alone 1 S 6:12; Is 9:20 + 13 times e.g. Genesis 13:9
- 2. יַד־שׂ׳ left hand, Ju 3:21; 7:20, so שׂ׳ alone Gn 48:13(×2), 14 (E), Ju 16:29; Ez 39:3; Jon 4:11; Pr 3:16; Dn 12:7; Ct 2:6; 8:3. e.g. Judges 3:21
- 3. = north (on left of one facing east, cf. אָתוֹר d, יָמִין 4, קֶדֶם 1 b) Gn 14:15; Jos 19:27 (P); cf. Ez 16:46. e.g. Genesis 14:15
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
(Baer Jos 1:7)54 n.[m.] the left (NH id.; Assyrian šumêlu; Arabic شِمَالٌ (also شَمَالٌ and شَأْمَلٌ, شَامَلٌ north wind); Old Aramaic שמאל, Palm. (sf.) סמלך; Syriac ܣܶܡܳܠܴܐ; √ dub., שאם + ל Nö M 128 HomA. u. A. i. (1892), 21 Köii. 1. 143, 405; (v. also Thes DietrWortforschung 234), cf. Arabic شأم be unlucky, شَأْمَةٌ left, شَأَم, شَام north; Sab. שאם north, unlucky DHMEpigr. Denkm. 29; Epigr. Denkm. Ar. Nos. 6. 7; other views in Sta§ 299 LagBN 116);—שְׂמֹאל abs. Gn 13:9 +, cstr. 48:13; 2 K 23:8; שְׂמֹאול abs. Nu 20:17 +; sf. שְׂמֹאלֶ֑ךָ 2 S 2:21, שְׂמֹאלוֹ Gn 48:13 +, etc.;—opp. יָמִין except Gn 14:15; Ju 19:27; 2 K 23:8;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שמלה (simlâh) (H8071) — garment.
Forms in the corpus
The 42 distinct written forms H8040 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8040, 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
Derived from this word
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 6 — 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 52 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 53 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 13:9
- Exodus 14:22
- Numbers 20:17
- Deuteronomy 2:27
- Joshua 1:7
- Judges 3:21
- 1 Samuel 6:12
- 2 Samuel 2:19
- 1 Kings 7:39
- 2 Kings 22:2
- 1 Chronicles 6:44
- 2 Chronicles 3:17
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.
