שְׂרָיָהוּ
Seraiah
BDB lists 10 entries for ‘Seraiah’ 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 H8304 appears in the Book of 2 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.
2 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.
שריה — transliterated Sᵉrâyâh — is a Hebrew name carrying the sense “Seraiah.” Debuting at 2 Samuel 8:17, it then recurs through the corpus. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 18 verses — uncommon. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Jeremiah. See 18-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8304 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 →
- 18
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 18 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,513
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,513 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 18 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Jeremiah 5 verses 28%
- 1 Chronicles 4 verses 22%
- Nehemiah 4 verses 22%
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 18 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 56%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 44%
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†: Seraiah 20×
- American Standard Version†: Seraiah 18×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Seraiah 19×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Seraiah 14×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8304 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8304 across 20† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H8304 across 19† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8304 across 14† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
11 senses and sub-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 11 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. secretary of David 2 S 8:17, but 𝔊B Ασα, ‖ שיא 20:25 Kt (שְׁוָא Qr), שַׁוְשָׁא 1 Ch 18:16 (in both Ἰησοῦς, 𝔊L Σουσα), שִׁישָׁא 1 K 4:3 (Σαβα, A Σεισα, 𝔊L Σαφατ); orig. in all prob. ששא We Dr Klo (Sausa), HPS (שושא), Now, Bu. e.g. 2 Samuel 8:17
- 2. chief priest 2 K 25:18 = Je 52:24. e.g. 2 Kings 25:18
- 3. a captain 2 K 25:23; Je 40:8; 51:59(×2), 61. e.g. 2 Kings 25:23
- 4.
- a. son of Ḳenaz 1 Ch 4:13, 14. e.g. 1 Chronicles 4:13
- b. name in Simeon v 35. e.g. 1 Chronicles 4:35
- c. Levite name 5:40(×2).
- 5.
- a. companion of Zerub. Ezr 2:2. e.g. Ezra 2:2
- b. father of Ezra 7:1. e.g. Ezra 7:1
- c. one sealed Ne 10:3. e.g. Nehemiah 10:3
- d. priest 11:11; 12:1, 12. e.g. Nehemiah 11:11
- 6. שְׂרָיָהוּ, officer of king Jehoiakim, Je 36:26, τῷ Σαρεα. e.g. Jeremiah 36:26
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
n.pr.m. (י׳ persisteth DrHastDict. Bib. ii. 530 Jacob);—usually Σαραια(ς);—שְׂרָיָה:
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שרה (sârâh) (H8280) — to contend.
Forms in the corpus
The 13 distinct written forms H8304 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/שְׂרָיָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 6:14 | 3 |
| וּ/שְׂרָיָ֨ה | Noun, Proper | 2 Kings 25:23 | 2 |
| שְׂרָיָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | Ezra 7:1 | 2 |
| שְׂרָיָ֥ה | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 10:2 | 2 |
| שְׂרָיָ֨ה | Noun, Proper | Ezra 2:2 | 2 |
| שְׂרָיָה֙ | Noun, Proper | 2 Kings 25:18 | 2 |
| וּ/שְׂרָיָ֑ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:13 | 1 |
| וּ/שְׂרָיָ֗ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:14 | 1 |
| לִ/שְׂרָיָ֣ה | Noun, Proper | Nehemiah 12:12 | 1 |
| שְׂרָיָ֑ה | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 51:61 | 1 |
| שְׂרָיָ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Chronicles 4:35 | 1 |
| שְׂרָיָ֣ה | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 51:59 | 1 |
| שְׂרָיָ֣הוּ | Noun, Proper | Jeremiah 36:26 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8304, 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
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.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Seraiah). 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
Soldier of Jehovah. (1.) The father of Joab (1 Chr. 4:13, 14).
(2.) The grandfather of Jehu (1 Chr. 4:35).
(3.) One of David's scribes or secretaries (2 Sam. 8:17).
(4.) A Netophathite (Jer. 40:8), a chief priest of the time of Zedekiah. He was carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, and there put to death (2 Kings 25:18, 23).
(5.) Ezra 2:2.
(6.) Father of Ezra the scribe (7:1).
(7.) A ruler of the temple (Neh. 11:11).
(8.) A priest of the days of Jehoiakim (Neh. 12:1, 12).
(9.) The son of Neriah. When Zedekiah made a journey to Babylon to do homage to Nebuchadnezzar, Seraiah had charge of the royal gifts to be presented on that occasion. Jeremiah took advantage of the occasion, and sent with Seraiah a word of cheer to the exiles in Babylon, and an announcement of the doom in store for that guilty city. The roll containing this message (Jer. 50:1-8) Seraiah was to read to the exiles, and then, after fixing a stone to it, was to throw it into the Euphrates, uttering, as it sank, the prayer recorded in Jer. 51:59-64. Babylon was at this time in the height of its glory, the greatest and most powerful monarchy in the world. Scarcely seventy years elapsed when the words of the prophet were all fulfilled. Jer. 51:59 is rendered in the Revised Version, "Now Seraiah was chief chamberlain," instead of "was a quiet prince," as in the Authorized Version.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
+ The king's scribe or secretary in the reign of David. (2 Samuel 8:17) (B.C. 1043.) + The high priest in the reign of Zedekiah. (2 Kings 25:18; 1 Chronicles 6:14; Jeremiah 52:24) (B.C. 594.) + The son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite. (2 Kings 25:23; Jeremiah 40:8) + The son of Kenaz and brother of Othniel. (1 Chronicles 4:13,14) + Ancestor of Jehu a Simeonite chieftain. (1 Chronicles 4:35) + One of the children of the province who returned with Zerubbabel. (Ezra 2:2) (B.C. 536.) + One of the ancestors of Ezra the scribe. (Ezra 7:1) + A priest, or priestly family, who signed the covenant with Nehemiah. (Nehemiah 10:2) + A priest, the son of Hilkiah. (Nehemiah 11:11) + The head of a priestly house which went up from Babylon with Zerubbabel. (Nehemiah 12:12) + The son of Neriah and brother of Baruch. (Jeremiah 51:59,61) He went with Zedekiah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. (B.C. 594.) Perhaps he was an officer who took charge of the royal caravan on its march, and fixed the places where it should halt.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
prince of the Lord
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 18 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.
