שַׁעֲרַ֫יִם
Shaaraim
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Shaaraim’ 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 H8189 appears in the Book of 1 Samuel — 1 distinct verse. 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.
1 Samuel
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 name שערים centers on the idea of “Shaaraim.” It occurs a mere 3 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Joshua (33%), then 1 Samuel and 1 Chronicles. It first appears in Joshua 15:36. For the data behind this summary, explore 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8189 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Joshua 1 verse 33%
- 1 Samuel 1 verse 33%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 33%
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 3 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 67%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 33%
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: Shaaraim 2×
- American Standard Version: Shaaraim 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Shaaraim 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Shaaraim 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8189 across 3 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8189 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8189 across 3 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8189 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 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. in the Shephelah of Judah (BuhlGeogr. 194) Jos 15:36, Σακαρειμ, 𝔊L Σεβαρειμ; דֶּרֶךְ שׁ׳ 1 S 17:52 (𝔊 τῶν πυλῶν). e.g. Joshua 15:36
- 2. in the Negeb (Simeon), וּבְשַׁעֲרָ֑יִם 1 Ch 4:31, Σεωρειμ, 𝔊L Σααριμ; = שָׁרוּחֶ֑ן (q.v.) Jos 19:6, and perhaps שִׁלְחִים (in Negeb of Judah) 15:32; BuhlGeogr. 185. e.g. 1 Chronicles 4:31
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
Derived from שער (shaʻar) (H8179) — gate.
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.
שַׁעַר II
- estimation, proportion. — Pl. שְׁעָרִים. Gen. R. s. 64 (ref. to Gen. XXVI, 12) מאה כורים מאה ש׳ מאה מניינים מאה ש׳ וכ׳ one hundred Kor; one hundred proportions, one hundred quantities; one hundred sh’ʿarim, this shows that they had made an estimate of it (the crop of the field), and it brought a hundred times the estimated quantity; Yalk. ib. 111 (corr. acc.); Pirké d’R. El. ch. XXXIII וכל דבר … מאה ש׳ של ממון וכ׳ and for every thing that he gave tithes of, the Lord sent him one hundred times the value, and he blessed him. e.g. Genesis 26:12
שְׁעָרִים
- Beth-Sh’ʿarim, near Sepphoris (v. Neub. Géogr. p. 200), one of the seats of the Sanhedrin. R. Hash. 31ᵇ. Sanh. 32ᵇ אחר רבי לב׳ ש׳ follow up Rabbi to B. Sh. Tosef. Ter. VII, 14; Tosef. Succ. II, 2 (the seat of R. Johanan ben Nuri). Tosef. Par. V (IV), 6; 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 3 distinct written forms H8189 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/שַׁעֲרַ֨יִם֙ | Noun, Proper | Joshua 15:36 | 1 |
| וּֽ/בְ/שַׁעֲרָ֑יִם | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:31 | 1 |
| שַׁעֲרַ֔יִם | Noun, Proper | 1 Samuel 17:52 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8189, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Shaaraim). 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
Two gates. (1.) A city in the plain of Judah (1 Sam. 17:52); called also Sharaim (Josh. 15:36).
(2.) A town in Simeon (1 Chr. 4:31).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(two gates), a city in the territory allotted to Judah, (Joshua 15:36) in Authorized Version incorrectly Sharaim. (1 Samuel 17:52) Shaaraim one of the towns of Simeon, (1 Chronicles 4:31) must be a different place.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
gates; valuation; hairs
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
