תּוֹכֵחָה
rebuke
also: correction, reproof, punishment, chastisement 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
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H8433 appears in the Book of Isaiah — 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.
Isaiah
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.
“rebuke” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun תוכחה (tôwkêchâh). It clusters heavily in Proverbs, which alone accounts for 57% of its uses. With 28 verses in 8 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Beyond “rebuke” it also covers “correction”, “reproof”, and “punishment” — see its full sense range. Translators differ — “reproof” in the King James Version, then “correction” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. See the sense tree, 28-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8433 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 →
- 28
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 28 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,190
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,190 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 28 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 28 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 22 verses · 79%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 21%
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†: Reproof 9×, Rebuke 4×, Rebukes 2×
- American Standard Version†: Reproof 10×, Rebuke 4×, Rebukes 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Correction 7×, Rebuke 6×, Reproof 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Rebuke 14×, Rebukes 3×, Chastisement 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8433 across 28† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H8433 across 28† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H8433 across 28† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8433 across 31† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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 3 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.
תוכחה I rebuke, correction
תוכחה II argument, reproof
- 1. argument, impeachment, spoken by lips and mouth ψ 38:15 Jb 13:6; 23:4 Hb 2:1. e.g. Psalms 38:15
- 2. reproof, chiding Pr 1:23; 27:5; ‖ עצה 1:25, 30; ‖ מוסר 3:11; 5:12; 10:17; 12:1; 13:18; 15:5, 10, 32; ת׳ מוסר 6:23 reproofs fordiscipline; ת׳ חיים 15:31 reproof that giveth life; אישׁ תוכחוֹת 29:1 man of reproofs (who deserves them). e.g. Proverbs 1:23
- 3. correction, rebuke ψ 39:12; 73:14; שֵׁבֶט ות׳ Pr 29:15; תּ׳ חֵמָה Ez 5:15; 25:17. e.g. Psalms 39:12
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. rebuke, correction;—יום ׳ת Ho 5:9; יום צרה ות׳ 2 K 19:3 = Is 37:3; pl. תּוֹכֵחוֹת ψ 149:7 (‖ נקמה).
I. n.f. argument, reproof;—ת׳ Pr 10:17 + 9 times; sf. תּוֹכַחְתִּי Hb 2:1 + 5 times; תּוֹכַחְתּוֹ Pr 3:11; pl. תּוֹכָחוֹת ψ 38:15 + 3 times; cstr. תּוֹכְחוֹת Pr 6:23 Ez 25:17; תֹּכְחוֹת 5:15 (but latter del. Co; given by SS under תּוֹכֵחָה);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from יכח (yâkach) (H3198) — to reprove.
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.
תּוֹכֵחָה
- reproof, admonition, threat of punishment. Arakh. 16ᵇ תמיהני … שמקבל ת׳ I wonder whether in this generation there is one that accepts admonition; Sifra K’dosch., Par. 2, ch. IV. Arakh. l. c. עד היכן ת׳ וכ׳ how far must you go in reproving your neighbor (Lev. XIX, 17)? Until he strikes you. Lev. R. s. 27 (ref. to Is. I, 18) זו תשובה וזו ת׳ is this an argument, and this a threat?; Tanḥ. Emor 10; Yalk. Mic. 554. Ḥag. 4ᵇ (ref. to Gen. XLV, 3) ומה ת׳ של בשר ודם כך ת׳ וכ׳ if the rebuke of a human being has such an effect, how much greater ought to be the effect of God’s rebuke!; a. fr.—Pl. תּוֹכָחוֹת. Tam. 28ᵃ יאהב את הת׳ שכל זמן שת׳ וכ׳ let man love reproofs, for as long as reproofs are in the world, ease of mind comes upon the world, good, and blessing &c. Deut. R. s. 1 ראויין היו הת׳ וכ׳ the rebukes (threats of punishment) should have been pronounced through Balaam, and the blessings through Moses; ib. יוכיחן משה … והת׳ ביד ישראל let Moses who loves them rebuke them, and Balaam who hates them, bless them in order that the blessings and the rebukes be made certain in Israel’s hand; Yalk. ib. 795. Deut. R. l. c. הואיל וקבלו עליהן תּוֹכְחוֹתֶיךָ וכ׳ because they accepted thy (Moses’) rebukes, thou must bless them; a. fr. e.g. Leviticus 19:17
תּוֹכֵחָה ²
- Targ. Mic. VI, 2.—Sabb. 152ᵃ תוכיחא Ms. M. (ed. תוכחה), v. שְׁלִיף II. Gen. R. s. 52 (ref. to Gen. XX, 16 ונכחת) כבר תּוֹכַחְתֵּיה … גביה וכ׳ this man’s (thy) reproof is already with him (thee, that thou didst not clothe thy wife honorably) &c.; Yalk. ib. 91 (not גבי). e.g. Genesis 20:16
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 20 distinct written forms H8433 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.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 27 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 28 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.
