שָׁמֵן
to be fat
‘to be fat’ is one of 3 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”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
2 distinct verses where H8080 appears in the Qal stem, across 2 books. 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.
Deuteronomy 1 verse
Jeremiah 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.
“to be fat” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb שמן (shâman). It is rare — just 4 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Deuteronomy. Scripture first uses it in Deuteronomy 32:15. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Qal, Hiphil, and more). See the sense tree, 4-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8080 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.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,337
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,337 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 25%
- Nehemiah 1 verse 25%
- Isaiah 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) 2 verses · 50%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 25%
- 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 2 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†: Became fat 1×, Fat 1×, They are waxen fat 1×
- American Standard Version†: Became fat 1×, Fat 1×, They are waxed fat 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Becoming fat 1×, Calloused 1×, Grew fat 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: And 1×, Fat 1×, Fattened 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8080 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8080 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8080 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8080 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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.
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.
שמן I grow fat (NH Hiph. id., also שֶׁמֶן
Qal
- Pf. 2 ms. שָׁמַ֫נְתָּ Dt 32:15 and Impf. 3 ms. וַיִּשְׁמַן v 15 both of Israel (propserous and arrogant) under fig. of fat beast; so Pf. 3 pl. שָֽׁמְנוּ Je 5:28 (of wicked). e.g. Deuteronomy 32:15
Hiphil
- Impf. 3 mpl. וַיַּשְׁמִינוּ Ne 9:25 were sated and shewed fatness (inner causat.); Imv. ms. הַשְׁמֵן Is 6:10 make fat (dull, unreceptive), לֵב הָעָם הַזֶּה. e.g. Nehemiah 9:25
שמן II fat, robust
- 1. fat, rich, of food, Gn 49:20 (poem in J), Is 30:23 (+ דָּשֵׁן), Hb 1:16 (‖ בְּרִאָה); of land, fertile Nu 13:20 (E), Ne 9:25, 35, pasturage Ez 34:14 1 Ch 4:40. (1 S 15:9 v. מִשְׁנֶה 3). e.g. Genesis 49:20
- 2. stout, robust, of men Ju 3:29 (‖ אִישׁ חַיִל; v. GFM); f. coll. (fig. of flock) Ez 34:16 (+ הַחֲזָקָה). e.g. Judges 3:29
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. vb. grow fat (NH Hiph. id., also שֶׁמֶן; Arabic سَمِنَ be fat; Aramaic ܫܡܶܢ, especially der. spec. and deriv.; שְׁמֵין adj. fat: Assyrian šamnu, fat; Ph. (Pun.) שמן oil, so Palm. שמנא Lzb378; on relation of meanings Frä147);—
II. adj. fat, robust;—שׁ׳ m. Ju 3:29 +, f. שְׁמֵנָה Gn 49:20 +;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
שֶׁמֶן
- preced. wds.) oil, fat. Sabb. II, 1 ש׳ שרפה oil of T’rumah which is condemned to be burnt on account of contamination; ש׳ קיק, v. קִיק. Ib. 2 ש׳ דגים fish-oil; ש׳ אגוזים nut-oil &c. Ib. 17ᵇ שׁמְנָן their oil, manufactured by gentiles; Ab. Zar. 36ᵃ. Ib. ש׳ רב יהודה וכ׳ as to gentiles’ oil, R. Judah and his court voted on it and permitted it. Pes. 83ᵇ; Ḥull. 91ᵃ; 92ᵇ שַׁמְנוֹ the fat surrounding the nervus ischiadicus, v. שׁוּמָן; a. fr.—עֵץ ש׳ pine-wood, v. עֵץ.—Pl. שְׁמָנִים, שְׁמָנִין. Sabb. II, 2 מתירין בכל הש׳ allow all kinds of oil to be used for Sabbath lights. Ib. 26ᵃ כל הש׳ יפין וכ׳ all oils are good for ink, but olive oil is the best. Y. Bicc. I, 64ᵇ top; a. fr.
מִן
- (b. h.) from, of; more (or less) than. Ab. Zar. 18ᵃ מן השמים ירחמו from heaven they will have mercy (on me), i.e. I trust in God. Sabb. 21ᵇ המהדרין מן המהדרין v. הָדַר.—מן המובחר, v. בָּחַר; מן המומחה, v. מוּמְחֶה.—Tem. 28ᵃ מן הבהמה להוציא וכ׳ ‘of the cattle’ (Lev. I, 2) intimates the exclusion of &c.; a. v. fr.—Prefix מִ־, מָי־, מֵ־, מֵי־ q. v.—מִנַּיִן, מִנַּיִין, מִינַּיִין (= b. h. מֵאַיִן, v. אַיִן) whence?, whence is it proven?—Yoma 32ᵃ מ׳ לחמש וכ׳ whence is derived the regulation about five immersions &c.? Ib. ומ׳ שכל טבילה וכ׳ and whence is the rule derived that each immersion requires &c.? Ib. 44ᵃ אין לי אלא … מ׳ this would prove to me only in favor of …, whence do you derive that the same applies to …?; a. v. fr. e.g. Leviticus 1:2
מִן ²
- Targ. Gen. I, 2; a. v. fr.—With suffixes of pers. pron. מִנִּי, מִי׳ from me; מִנָּךְ, מִי׳ from thee; מִנֵּיה, מִי׳ from him, it &c. Ib. XXII, 12. Ib. III, 3; a. fr.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᵃ bot. מן הן דסלק to where he had come from. Sabb. 80ᵇ מן דיליה דא ליה this came to him from his own doing. Sot. 40ᵃ ומאי נפקא ליך מִינָּהּ and what difference does it make? מִנִּי ומִנֵּיה יתקלס וכ׳ through myself and him the Most High is exalted. B. Kam. 18ᵃ קאזיל מיניה מיניה it was lost through its (the chicken’s) action alone. Y. Peah VII, 20ᵇ מיניה וביה הוא (the sweetness) is entirely its own (no honey has been added). Snh. 39ᵇ, v. אִבָּא; a. fr.—לא כולא מיניה, לא כל כמיניה it is not at all in his power; v. כּוֹלָא.—מן ד־ from the time that, after; from the fact that; when; because. Lam. R. to II, 2 מן דאכלון after they had eaten; a. v. fr.; v. מִדְּ־.
מָן I
- portion, food. Num. R. s. 12 (play on א̇ר̇ג̇מ̇ן̇) the sun שיצרו הקב"ה לארוג מן וכ׳ whom the Lord has created to weave (ripen) food for creatures; ואין מן אלא פירות וכ׳ man means fruits and food (with ref. to וימן, Dan. I, 5).—Esp. מָּן(הַ) the manna of the desert. Ex. R. s. 25. Tanḥ. B’shall. 20; Mekh. ib., Vayassa, s. 2 אוכלי המן those eating manna (not troubling themselves about to-morrow). Yoma 75ᵃ; a. fr. e.g. Daniel 1:5
מַן I
- (a day’s) support. Succ. 39ᵇ בכדי מן for as much only as is needed for the day. Ib. דהאי מ׳ וכ׳ that man means support, v. preced.—Esp. מַנָּא the manna. Targ. Ex. XVI, 31. Targ. Y. ib. 27; a. e. (some ed. מָנָא).
מַן
- who?, what?, v. מַאן. Targ. Gen. XXIV, 23. Ib. XXXIII, 8 (ed. Berl. מָא; oth. ed. מאן); a. fr.—Emphatic. (מָנָא) מְנָא. Targ. Ps. XXXIX, 5. Targ. Prov. IV, 19; a. fr.
מָן III
- thing, vessel, garment; coulter, v. מָאן.
שָׁמֵן I
- (b. h.) [to be smooth,] to be fat.
- to grow fat, improve. Y. B. Kam. IX, beg. 6ᵈ גזל כחושה והִשְׁמִינָה if he took forcibly a lean animal, and it grew fat (in his possession); Tosef. B. Kam. VII, 17; Bab. B. Kam. 65ᵃ; a. e.
- to become smooth, bright; to glisten. Gen. R. s. 34 כל שהוא … היא מִשְׁתַּמֶּנֶת the more he beats it (the flax), the more it will glisten; Yalk. ib. 95; Yalk. Ps. 654.
- 1. (denom. of (denom. of שֶׁמֶן) to oil. Men. 23ᵃ קומץ … שׁשִׁמְּנוֹ וכ׳ the handful of the sinner’s meal-offering on which he (the priest) put oil, … has become unfit for the altar; Yalk. Lev. 474.
- 2. to smooth, level; ש׳ בין to compromise to average. B. Mets. 87ᵃ השוכר … מְשַׁמְּנִין ביניהם if one hires a laborer, saying, I will pay you as much as one or two of the inhabitants of the place get: he may pay him the lowest wages …; the scholars say, you compromise between them, i.e. you make him pay the average wages. B. Bath. VII, 4 האומר … משמנין ביניהם וכ׳ if one says to his neighbor, I sell thee one-half of my field (and one part is better than the other), we compromise between them, i.e. the field is divided into two portions of equal value, but the purchaser must take whichever portion the seller may assign to him; חציה בדרום … משמנין וכ׳ if he says, I sell thee half of the field on the south side, we compromise between them, and he gets his portion on the south side; expl. ib. 107ᵇ משמנין … לדמי ‘we compromise’ means according to value. Bekh. II, 6, sq. משמנין ביניהם we compromise between them, i.e. the priest takes the inferior of the twin animals, and the difference in value remains under litigation; expl. ib. 18ᵃ מהו משמנין שומן יהא ביניהן m’shamm’nin means, the fat one (the difference of value) remains to be decided &c., v. שׁוּמָן.
שָׁמֵן
- preced.) fat, rich. Keth. 61ᵃ בשר ש׳ fat meat. Pes. 42ᵃ. Ḥull. 45ᵇ גדי שמן Rashi (ed. גדי שמינה, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 8) a fat kid. Y. B. Kam. IX, beg. 6ᵈ גזל ש׳ והכחישה וכ׳ if he took by force a fat animal, and it became lean &c., v. שׁוּמָן; a. fr.—Pl. שְׁמֵנִים, שְׁמֵי׳; שְׁמֵנוֹת, שְׁמֵי׳. Gen. R. s. 66 דגים ש׳ יתיר מדאי exceedingly fat fish. Num. R. s. 1612 אם … אם ש׳ whether its fruits are light or rich; ib. אם של צונמא … ש׳, v. צוֹנָם; Tanḥ. Sh’laḥ 6; a. fr.
שְׁמַן
- (preced. wds.)
- 1. cream. Targ. O. Gen. XVIII, 8 (Y. לוואי שָׁמִין; h. text חמאה). Targ. Ps. LV, 22 ש׳ דגובנין (h. text מחמאות).
- 2. fat. Targ. Is. XXX, 23. Targ. Y. Gen. XVIII, 7 שְׁמֵין.—V. שׁוּמְנָא.
שִׁמָּן
- Shimmon, v. שִׁמְעוֹן.
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 5 distinct written forms H8080 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַשְׁמֵן֙ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperative, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Isaiah 6:10 | 1 |
| וַ/יִּשְׁמַ֤ן | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 32:15 | 1 |
| וַ/יַּשְׁמִ֔ינוּ | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Nehemiah 9:25 | 1 |
| שָׁמְנ֣וּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Jeremiah 5:28 | 1 |
| שָׁמַ֖נְתָּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 32:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8080, 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
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 5 — 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 3 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.
