שָׂרָה
to contend
‘to contend’ is one of 2 main senses 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (50%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (50%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 2 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8280 appears — 2 distinct verses across 2 books. 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.
Genesis 1 verse
Hosea 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.
שרה — transliterated sârâh — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to contend.” With only 2 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. More than half of its appearances fall in Genesis. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 32:28. The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. Dig into 2-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8280 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
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 2 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 50%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 50%
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 4 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†: He had power 1×, Prince hast thou power 1×
- American Standard Version†: He had power 1×, Thou hast striven 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: He wrestled 1×, You have struggled 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: He struggled 1×, You have struggled 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8280 across 2† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8280 across 2† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8280 across 2† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8280 across 2† 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 1 sense 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.
שרה I persist, exert oneself, persevere (Arabic شَرِىَ persist, persevere)
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. שׂ׳ אֶת־א׳ Ho 12:4 he persevered with God; 2 ms. שָׂרִיתָ עִם־א׳ וְעִם אֲנָשִׁים Gn 32:29 (J).—Ho 12:5 has Impf. וַיָּ֫שַׂר in same meaning, as if from a (non-existent) שׂוּר; וַיִּ֫שֶׂר (apoc. from וַיִּשְׂרֶה).—שׂוֹרָה Is 28:25 v. supra, p. 965a. e.g. Hosea 12:4
שרה II incess, noble lady
שרה III f. wife of Abraham (princess)
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. n.f. et pr. v. sub שׂרר.
II. vb. persist, exert oneself, persevere (Arabic شَرِىَ persist, persevere);—
III. n.f. princess, noble lady;—cstr. שָׂרָ֫תִי (Ges§ 90 l) La 1:1; pl. שָׂרוֹת 1 K 11:3, cstr. id. Est 1:18; sf. שָׂרוֹתֶיהָ Ju 5:29, -תֵיהֶם Is 49:23;—princesses attending Sisera’s mother Ju 5:29; of Sol.’s wives 1 K 11:3, other queens Is 49:23 (‖ מְלָכִים); wives of nobles Est 1:18; fig. of Jerus. La 1:1.
IV. n.pr.f. wife of Abraham (princess);—Σαρρα: Gn 17:15 (where formal change from שָׂרַי), v 17, 19, 21; 21:1b, 3; 23:1(×2), 2(×2), 19; 25:10, 12; 49:31 (all P), 18:6 + 9 times 18, 21:1a, 2a; 24:36, 67 (all J), 20:2(×2), 14, 16, 18; 21:6, 7, 9, 12 (all E); an ancestress of Hebrews Is 51:2.
— 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.
שָׂרָא
- Y. Snh. VII, 25ᵈ גזר … על שרה דימא וכ׳ R. J. commanded the chief of the sea, and he swallowed them up. Lev. R. s. 5 שידא שָׂרֵיהוֹן וכ׳, v. רוּחָא; a. e.
שָׂרָה
- m. ch., v. שָׂרָא
שָׂרָה ²
- (b. h.)
- 1. princess, v. שַׂר.
- 2. pr. n. f. Sarah, a) wife of Abraham. Ber. 13ᵃ ש׳ היא שרי Sarah and Sarai have the same meaning. Snh. 39ᵇ עדין … יופי של ש׳ she had not yet attained to half the beauty of Sarah. Gen. R. s. 39 אברהם … וש׳ וכ׳ Abraham convented the men, and Sarah the women; a. v. fr.—b) Gitt. 34ᵇ ופורתא ש׳, v. פֹּורְתָּא.
שָׁרָה
- , v. שרי
שרי
- to dissolve, soak, steep. Naz. VI, 1 ש׳ פתו ביין וכ׳ if he (the Nazirite) steeped his bread in wine, and there is enough in both together to make up the size of an olive; Pes. 44ᵇ. Naz. 37ᵃ אם ש׳ ענביו במים וכ׳ if he steeped grapes in water, and a taste of wine remained in it. Pes. II, 7 אין שׁוֹרִין וכ׳ you dare not soak bran for chickens (on the Passover); ib. האשה לא תִשְׁרֶה וכ׳ a woman must not soak bran to take with her to the bathhouse. Sabb. I, 5 אין שורין … כדי שיִשּׁוֹרוּ וכ׳ you must not lay in ink-materials or dyes …, unless they can be dissolved (or soaked through) before the Sabbath sets in. Eduy. I, 8; a. fr.
- to be soaked, dissolved. Y. Ber. IX, 13ᵈ bot. כדי שתִּשָּׁרֶה וכ׳, v. מְגוּפָה; Y. Taan. I, 64ᵇ top שתשרף (corr. acc.). Gen. R. s. 17, end אדם … מיד היא נִשְׁרֵית … אינו נִשְׁרֶה man is made out of earth, when you put a drop of water on it, it is at once dissolved (soft), but woman is made of a bone, which is not dissolved, even if you let it lie in water for many days. Y. Sabb. XIV, 14ᶜ top כל … והיא נשרית … ושאינה נשרית וכ׳ when you put salt in, and it dissolves, it is called salt water, but when it is not dissolved, it is called halmé; a. e.—Sabb. I, 5 יִשּׁוֹרוּ (fr. שור or נשר), v. supra.
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 2 distinct written forms H8280 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| שָׂרִ֧יתָ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 32:28 | 1 |
| שָׂרָ֥ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Hosea 12:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8280, 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 → 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
