אֶשְׁכּוֹל
cluster
‘cluster’ 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 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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H811 appears in the Book of Song of Solomon — 3 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.
Song of Solomon
- Song of Solomon 1:14 אֶשְׁכֹּ֨ל n c ms cs My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms From the vineyards of En Gedi. Lover
- Song of Solomon 7:7 לְ/אַשְׁכֹּלֽוֹת prep + n c mp This, your stature, is like a palm tree, Your breasts like its fruit.
- Song of Solomon 7:8 כְּ/אֶשְׁכְּל֣וֹת prep + n c mp cs I said, "I will climb up into the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit." Let your breasts be like clusters of the vine, The smell of your breath like apples, Beloved
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.
The Hebrew noun אשכול centers on the idea of “cluster.” First canonically at Genesis 40:10, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 9 verses — uncommon. Song of Solomon dominates its distribution — 3 of 9 verses. Its meaning spans more than one sense — see its full sense range. Dig into 9-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H811 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Song of Solomon 3 verses 33%
- Numbers 2 verses 22%
- Genesis 1 verse 11%
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 9 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 4 verses · 44%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 33%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 22%
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: Clusters 3×, Cluster 2×
- American Standard Version: Cluster 3×, Clusters 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Cluster 4×, Clusters 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Cluster 3×, Clusters 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H811 across 9 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H811 across 9 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H811 across 9 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H811 across 10 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.
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 2 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. cluster of grapes, א׳ עֲנָבִים Nu 13:23 cf. v 24; vid. also Gn 40:10 הִבְשִׁילוּ א׳ עֲנָבִים its clusters ripened grapes; hence fig. of deeds of enemies of Israel, clusters of gall have they Dt 32:32 (‖ עִנְּבֵי רוֹשׁ); fig. of Isr. Is 65:8 יִמָּצֵא הַתִּירוֹשׁ בָּא׳; Mi 7:1 אֵין אֶשְׁכּוֹל לֶאֱכוֹל fig. of desolation of Israel under Yahweh’s judgment; Ct 7:9 in sim. שָׁדַיִךְ כְּאֶשְׁכְּלוֹת הַגֶּפֶן cf. v 8 (where Thes MV think of clusters of dates, v. תָּמָר palm-tree, ib.) e.g. Numbers 13:23
- 2. cluster of henna-flowers, א׳ הַכֹּפֶר (v. כפר), metaph. of the beloved one Ct 1:14. (Cf. GrünwaldIsrael. Letterbode, Amst., xi, 148 f.) e.g. Song of Solomon 1:14
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
(אֶשְׁכֹּל Ct 1:14) n.m. Nu 13:23 cluster (Ethiopic አስካል Arabic إِثْكَالٌ, Aramaic אִיתְכְּלָא; etym. dub.; Thes MV sub √שׁכל, but no suitable meaning proven; Sta§ 258, 300 der. from √ אשׁך c. afformat. ל)—א׳ abs. Nu 13:24 +; cstr. v 23 +; pl. אַשְׁכֹּלוֹת Ct 7:8; cstr. אַשְׁכְּלֹת Dt 32:32, אֶשְׁכְּלוֹת Ct 7:9; sf. אַשְׁכְּלֹתֶיהָ Gn 40:10;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אשך (ʼeshek) (H810) — testicle.
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.
אֶשְׁכּוֹל
- bunch, cluster (of grapes). Y. Naz. II, beg. 51ᵈ תורה קראת לא׳ וכ׳ the Bible calls the (berry in the) cluster must (tirosh, ref. to Is. LXV, 8) while people (at present) call the dried berry must (i.e. in common parlance abstinence from ‘berry’ means from grape-juice, must &c.).—אשכול של בצים the ovary (of birds). Tosef. Zab. V, 9; Bets. 7ᵃ.—Midd. III, 8 א׳ של זהב a gold imitation of a cluster of grapes.—2) Trnsf. a distinguished scholar (opp. עַלִּין leaves = the ignorant); v. infra. Cant. R. to I, 14, a. e. (play on the word) א̇ישׁ שהכ̇ל̇ בו a man in whom all is contained, i.e. universality of knowledge.—Pl. אֶשְׁכּוֹלוֹת, אֶשְׁכֹּלוֹת. Ḥull. 92ᵃ א׳ שבה וכ׳ the grapes thereon (on the nation), that means the scholars; cmp. Lev. R. s. 36.—Esp. the scholars of the early Maccabean period. Sot. IX, 9 (47ᵃ); Tem. 15ᵇ. Y. Sot. IX, 24ᵃ top, v. זוּגוֹת; Tosef. B. Kam. VIII, 13 אישכלות. Ch. אֶתְכָּלָא. e.g. Isaiah 65:8
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 9 distinct written forms H811 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| אֶשְׁכּ֣וֹל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Micah 7:1 | 1 |
| אֶשְׁכֹּ֨ל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Song of Solomon 1:14 | 1 |
| אַשְׁכְּלֹ֥ת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Deuteronomy 32:32 | 1 |
| אַשְׁכְּלֹתֶ֖י/הָ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Genesis 40:10 | 1 |
| בָּֽ/אֶשְׁכּ֔וֹל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 65:8 | 1 |
| הָֽ/אֶשְׁכּ֔וֹל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 13:24 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶשְׁכּ֤וֹל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Numbers 13:23 | 1 |
| כְּ/אֶשְׁכְּל֣וֹת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Song of Solomon 7:8 | 1 |
| לְ/אַשְׁכֹּלֽוֹת | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Song of Solomon 7:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H811, 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
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 → 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 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
