שָׁמַ֫יִן
heaven
also: heavens, sky fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Every verse where H8065 appears in the Book of Ezra — 7 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.
Ezra
- Ezra 5:11 שְׁמַיָּ֜/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art Thus they returned us answer, saying, We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and are building the house that was built these many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished.
- Ezra 5:12 שְׁמַיָּ֔/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon.
- Ezra 6:9 שְׁמַיָּ֟/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art That which they have need of, both young bulls, and rams, and lambs, for burnt offerings to the God of heaven; [also] wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the word of the priests who are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail;
- Ezra 6:10 שְׁמַיָּ֑/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art that they may offer sacrifices of sweet savor to the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.
- Ezra 7:12 שְׁמַיָּ֛/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect and so forth.
- Ezra 7:21 שְׁמַיָּ֔/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art I, even I Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers who are beyond the River, that whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done with all diligence,
- Ezra 7:23 שְׁמַיָּ֔/א שְׁמַיָּ֑/א n c mp det + ptcl def.art n c mp det + ptcl def.art Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be done exactly for the house of the God of heaven; for why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons?
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.
שמין (shâmayin) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “heaven.” Daniel dominates its distribution — 27 of 35 verses. Spanning 35 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Ezra 5:11. Ranging over 3 senses, its meaning includes “heavens” and “sky”. 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 H8065 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 →
- 35
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 35 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #947
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 947 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 35 occurrences in the concordance →
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 35 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 34 verses · 97%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 3%
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: Heaven 35×, Heavens 3×
- American Standard Version: Heaven 32×, Heavens 5×
- Berean Standard Bible: Heaven 28×, Air 3×, Heavens 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Heaven 32×, Heavens 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8065 across 38 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8065 across 38 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8065 across 37 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8065 across 39 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 3 senses 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.
- heaven, heavens, sky
- visible sky
- Heaven (as abode of God)
Word origin
Derived from שמים (shâmayim) (H8064) — heaven.
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.
שָׁמִין I
- (v. שְׁמִינִי) Shamin, a coin, one eighth of an Italian Isar (As). Kidd. 12ᵃ שתי פרוטות לש׳ the Shamin has two P’ruṭahs; Tosef. B. Bath. V, 12 לשמן ed. Zuck. (Var. לשווין, corr. acc.); Y. Kidd. I, 58ᵈ שני פרוטות שמין.—Pl. שְׁמֹנִין. Kidd. l. c. שני ש׳ להנץ two Shamins make one Hannets (v. הַנֵּץ); Tosef. l. c.; Y. Kidd. l. c. שני שמין ניצים (corr. acc.).
שָׁמִין
- = h. שָׁמֵן, fat. Targ. Y. Gen. XVIII, 8. Ib. 7; v. שְׁמַן.
שְׁמֹנִין
- , pl. of שָׁמִין I.
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 16 distinct written forms H8065 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| שְׁמַיָּ֔/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:18 | 11 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:13 | 4 |
| לִ/שְׁמַיָּ֔/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:11 | 3 |
| שְׁמַיָּ/א֙ | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:38 | 3 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֣/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:23 | 3 |
| שְׁמַיָּֽ/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:19 | 3 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֑/א | Particle, Definite Article | Ezra 6:10 | 2 |
| בִּ/שְׁמַיָּ/א֙ | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:28 | 1 |
| בִּ/שְׁמַיָּ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 6:27 | 1 |
| לִ/שְׁמַיָּ֣/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:34 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֛/א | Particle, Definite Article | Ezra 7:12 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֜/א | Particle, Definite Article | Ezra 5:11 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֟/א | Particle, Definite Article | Ezra 6:9 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֡/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:23 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֤/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:44 | 1 |
| שְׁמַיָּ֥/א | Particle, Definite Article | Jeremiah 10:11 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 28 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 35 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.
