שָׁמִיר
Shamir
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Shamir’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H8069 appears — 4 distinct verses across 3 books. 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.
Joshua 1 verse
Judges 2 verses
- Judges 10:1 בְּ/שָׁמִ֖יר prep + n Proper After Abimelech there arose to save Israel Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar; and he lived in Shamir in the hill-country of Ephraim.
- Judges 10:2 בְּ/שָׁמִֽיר prep + n Proper He judged Israel twenty-three years, and died, and was buried in Shamir.
1 Chronicles 1 verse
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.
שמיר — transliterated Shâmîyr — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Shamir.” It occurs a mere 4 verses across Scripture. More than half of its appearances fall in Judges. Debuting at Joshua 15:48, it then recurs through the corpus. See 4-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8069 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Judges 2 verses 50%
- Joshua 1 verse 25%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 25%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Shamir 3×
- American Standard Version†: Shamir 3×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Shamir 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Shamir 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8069 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8069 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8069 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8069 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 4 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.
שמיר I
- 1. coll. thorns, thorn-bushes, token of waste-land, only Is, + שַׁיִת Is 5:6; 7:23, 24, 25; 27:4; fig. 9:17; 10:17; קוֹץ שׁ׳ 32:13. e.g. Isaiah 5:6
- 2. adamant, as sharp, כְּתוּבָה … בְּצִפֹּרֶן שׁ׳ Je 17:1 (‖ בְּעֵט בַּרְזֶל); as hard, fig. of prophet’s firmness Ez 3:9; Zc 7:12 fig. of hard heart. e.g. Jeremiah 17:1
שמיר II loc.
- 1. in הַר אֶפְרַיִם Ju 10:1, 2, Σαμειρ; A 𝔊L Σαμαρεια. e.g. Judges 10:1
- 2. in (יְהוּדָה) הַר Jos 15:48, Σαμειρ; A 𝔊L Σαφειρ. e.g. Joshua 15:48
שמיר III m. Levite, 1 Ch 24
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
I. n.m. Ez 3:9 thorn(s), adamant, flint;—abs. שׁ׳ Is 5:6 +; sf. שְׁמִירוֹ 10:17;—
III. n.pr.m. Levite, 1 Ch 24:24 Qr, Σαμηρ, Σεμμηρ (Kt שמור).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שמיר (shâmîyr) (H8068) — thorn.
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.
שָׁמִיר
- [pointed,] thorn; flint, diamond; (in legend) shamir, a worm that cuts stones with its glance. Sot. IX, 12 משחרב … בטל הש׳ with the destruction of the Temple the shamir ceased to exist. Ib. 48ᵇ; Tosef. ib. XV, 1; Y. ib. IX, 24ᵇ; a. e.
שָׁמִיר ²
- 1. flint. Targ. Y. II, Deut. XXXII, 13 (h. text חלמיש). Targ. Ps. CXIV, 8. Targ. Job XXVIII, 9.
- 2. diamond; shamir. Targ. Ez. III, 9. Targ. Zech. VII, 12; a. e.—Gitt. 68ᵃ איכא ש׳ דאייתיה וכ׳ there is the shamir which Moses used for the jewels of the Ephod. Ib.ᵇ בעינא … ש׳ I want to build the Temple, and want the shamir; a. e.
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 4 distinct written forms H8069 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ/שָׁמִ֖יר | Noun, Proper | Judges 10:1 | 1 |
| בְּ/שָׁמִֽיר | Noun, Proper | Judges 10:2 | 1 |
| שָׁמִ֥יר | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:48 | 1 |
| שָׁמִֽיר | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 24:24 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Shamir). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
A sharp thorn. (1.) One of the sons of Michah (1 Chr. 24:24).
(2.) A town among the mountains of Judah (Josh. 15:48); probably Somerah, 2 1/2 miles north-west of Debir.
(3.) The residence of Tola, one of the judges, on Mount Ephraim (Judg. 10:1, 2).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(n point or thorn.)
+ A town in the mountain district of Judah. (Joshua 15:48) only. It probably lay some eight or ten miles south of Hebron. + A place in Mount Ephraim, the residence and burial-place of Tola the judge. (Judges 10:1,2) Perhaps Samur, half-way between Samaria and Jenin . + A Kohathite, son of Micah or Michal, the first-born of Uzziel. (1 Chronicles 24:24)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
Shamer, prison; bush; lees; thorn
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
