שַׁרְבִֿיט
scepter
‘scepter’ 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 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.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 3 times (75%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (25%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 4 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8275 appears — 3 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Esther 3 verses
- Esther 4:11 שַׁרְבִ֥יט n c ms cs All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whoever, whether man or woman, shall come to the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law for him, that he be put to death, except those to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.
- Esther 5:2 שַׁרְבִ֤יט הַ/שַּׁרְבִֽיט n c ms cs ptcl def.art + n c ms It was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favor in his sight; and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the scepter.
- Esther 8:4 שַׁרְבִ֣ט n c ms cs Then the king held out to Esther the golden scepter. So Esther arose, and stood before the king.
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.
At its core, שרביט (sharbîyṭ) means “scepter.” It is rare — just 3 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its uses cluster heavily in Esther (100% of all occurrences). Scripture first uses it in Esther 4:11. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Dig into 3-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8275 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.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 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 3 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Esther 3 verses 100%
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.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 100%
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†: Sceptre 4×
- American Standard Version†: Sceptre 4×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Scepter 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Scepter of 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8275 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8275 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8275 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8275 across 4† 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.
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 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.
שרביט I let loose (NH id., dissolve
Qal
- Impf. 3 ms. sf. יִשְׁרֵ֫הוּ Jb 37:3 he (God) lets it loose (i.e. the thunder). e.g. Job 37:3
Piel
- Pf. 1 s. sf. שֵׁרִיתִ֫ךָ Je 15:11 Qr I will set thee free (cf. 40:4 𝔗 𝔖), but dub.; Kt שרותך (i.e. שָׁרוֹתִךָ, √ שׁרר), Thes Gie I vex thee [שַׁרַר = צָרַר, very dub.]; Ew al. RV strengthen thee; this yields best sense, but as Aramaic שׁרר is intrans., read then שֵׁרַרְתִּךָ or הֲשֵׁרוֹתִךָ, Dr; Jerome Rabb read שֵׁרִיתְךָ = שְׁאֵרִיתְךָ thy remnant (AV). e.g. Jeremiah 15:11
שרביט II sceptre (expanded from foreg., Ges§ 85 w)
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. let loose (NH id., dissolve; Assyrian šarû, Pi. open (building, for use), dedicate it; tašr̂tu, dedication; Old Aramaic שרה loose, so Aramaic שְׁרָא, ܫܪܳܐ; Ethiopic ሰረየ; remit, condone);—
I. n.m. sceptre (expanded from foreg., Ges§ 85 w);—only Est: abs. הַשּׁ׳ 5:2; cstr. שׁ׳ הַוָּהָב 4:11; 5:2; שַׁרְבִט הַוּ׳ 8:4.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שבט (shêbeṭ) (H7626) — staff.
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.
שַׁרְבִיט
- , v. שֵׁבֶט)
- 1. staff, sceptre, rod. Snh. II, 5 ואין משתמשין בשַׁרְבִיטוֹ and we dare not use his (the king’s) sceptre. Arakh. 19ᵃ, v. כָּפַף. Cant. R. to II, 16 אין שרביטו … שלבם וכ׳ God’s rod (of chastisement) comes down only upon men whose heart is soft like lilies; a. fr.
- 2. shoot, twig, stem with pods, bunch. Tosef. Kil. I, 10. Ukts. I, 5 ש׳ של תמרה שריקנו a twig of a date tree which was stripped of its dates. Ib. וכן בקטניות ש׳ שריקנו and so in the case of summer fruits, if they emptied the pods on a stem.
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 H8275 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/שַּׁרְבִֽיט | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Esther 5:2 | 1 |
| שַׁרְבִ֣ט | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Esther 8:4 | 1 |
| שַׁרְבִ֤יט | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Esther 5:2 | 1 |
| שַׁרְבִ֥יט | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Esther 4:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8275, 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 3 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.
