שָׂעִיר
goat
‘goat’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-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.
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
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.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
8 verses where H8163 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Leviticus. 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.
Leviticus
- Leviticus 4:23 שְׂעִ֥יר n c ms cs if his sin, in which he has sinned, is made known to him, he shall bring as his offering a goat, a male without blemish.
- Leviticus 9:3 שְׂעִיר n c ms cs You shall speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'Take a male goat for a sin offering; and a calf and a lamb, both a year old, without blemish, for a burnt offering;
- Leviticus 9:15 שְׂעִ֤יר n c ms cs He presented the people's offering, and took the goat of the sin offering which was for the people, and killed it, and offered it for sin, like the first.
- Leviticus 10:16 שְׂעִ֣יר n c ms cs Moses diligently inquired about the goat of the sin offering, and, behold, it was burned: and he was angry with Eleazar and with Ithamar, the sons of Aaron who were left, saying,
- Leviticus 16:5 שְׂעִירֵ֥י n c mp cs He shall take from the congregation of the children of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering
- Leviticus 16:15 שְׂעִ֤יר n c ms cs "Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat:
- Leviticus 16:27 שְׂעִ֣יר n c ms cs The bull for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried forth outside the camp; and they shall burn their skins, their flesh, and their dung with fire.
- Leviticus 23:19 שְׂעִיר n c ms cs You shall offer one male goat for a sin offering, and two male lambs a year old for a sacrifice of peace offerings.
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 word שעיר centers on the idea of “goat.” Where the King James Version says “kid,” newer translations reach for “male goat” (Berean Standard Bible) and “buck of” (unfoldingWord Literal Text); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 57 verses — moderately common. Numbers dominates its distribution — 27 of 57 verses. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. Dig into 57-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8163 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 →
- 57
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 57 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #647
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 647 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 57 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 57 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 49 verses · 86%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 9%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 5%
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†: Kid 25×, Goat 21×, Devils 2×
- American Standard Version†: Goat 16×, Male 12×, He 11×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Male goat 32×, Goat 10×, Goats 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Buck of 22×, And 13×, Goat 9×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8163 across 59† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H8163 across 58† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H8163 across 58† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 H8163 across 76† 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 BDB
The 2 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.
- hairy (adjective)
- he-goat, buck (noun masculine)
Word origin
I. n.m.Nu 15:24 he-goat, buck (hairy one; NH id.);—abs. שׂ׳ Lv 4:24 +, cstr. שְׂעִיר Nu 7:16 +; pl. שְׂעִירִם Lv 16:7, 8; cstr. שְׂעִירֵי v 5 Nu 7:87;—he-goat, usually שְׂעִיר(־)עִזִּים buck of goats (v. עֵז p. 777): Gn 37:31 (J), Ez 43:22; 45:23 Lv 4:23; 9:3; 23:19 + 20 times Nu (all P); שְׂעִירֵי ע׳ Lv 16:5 Nu 7:87 (P); שׂ׳ alone = he-goat Lv 4:24 + 11 times Lv 16 (P); שְׂעִיר (הַ)חַטָּאת he-goat for sin-offering Ez 43:25 Lv 9:15 + 9 times Lv Nu; שְׂעִירֵי הַח׳ 2 Ch 29:23; in Dn 8:21 הַשּׂ׳ is prob. gloss to הַצָּפִיר (cf. Dr).
II. n.m. satyr, demon (with he-goat’s form, or feet; NH id.; cf. BaudStud. i. 136 ff.; hairy demons WeSkizzen iii. 135; Heid. 152 RSSem 113, 423; 2nd ed. 120, 441); abs. שׂ׳ Is 34:14 inhabiting desolate ruins, so pl. שְׂעִירִים 13:21; name for idols 2 Ch 11:15 and (שְׂעִרִם) Lv 17:7 (H); prob. also בָּמוֹת הַשּׂ׳ 2 K 23:8 (MT הַשְּׁעָרִים) HoffmZAW ii (1882), 175 SS Kmp Klo Kit Benz Bur.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שער (sâʻar) (H8175) — to dread.
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.
שָׂעִיר
- 1. goat. Yoma VI, 2 ש׳ המשתלח, v. שָׁלַח. Ib. 7 פר וש׳ הנשרפין the bullock and the goat designated to be burnt. Zeb. V, 1; a. fr.—Pl. שְׂעִירִים, שְׂעִירִין. Ib. 2. Yoma VI, 1; a. fr.
- 2. demon. B. Bath. 25ᵃ, v. סָעַר II. Ber. 64ᵃ ש׳ בש׳ מיחלף goat and demon may interchange (both going by the name of saʿir).— Pl. as ab. Lev. R. s. 22, v. שֵׁד; a. e.
- 3. shower. Pl. as ab. Sifré Deut. 306 (ref. to Deut. XXXII, 2) מה ש׳ הללו וכ׳ as the showers come down on the plants &c.; Yalk. ib. 942, v. סָעַר II. e.g. Deuteronomy 32:2
- 4. hairy. Gen. R. s. 65.
שֵׂעִיר
- (b. h.) pr. n. Seir (Idumæa). Y. Taan. I, 64ᵃ top (ref. to Is. XXI, 11) אֵלִי קורא מפני ש׳ my God cries out on account of Seir (Rome, v. אֱדוֹם); ib. אלי איכן נזדווג לי מש׳ whence did my God come to join me? From Seir (Deut. XXXIII, 2). Sifré Deut. 343 כשעתיד … ליפרע מש׳ when the Lord shall punish Seir (Rome). Ber. 62ᵇ עד השתא … לש׳ וגמרת מילי דש׳ thou hast not yet gone to Seir (Rome), and hast already learned the things of Seir (indecent manners); Tam. 27ᵇ; a. fr. e.g. Isaiah 21:11
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 24 distinct written forms H8163 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 H8163, 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 8 — 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 57 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 57 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.
