תָּם
perfect
‘perfect’ is one of 4 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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H8535 appears in the Book of Proverbs — 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.
Proverbs
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, תם (tâm) means “perfect.” The word gravitates to Job (50%), then Psalms and Song of Solomon. It appears 14 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. Where the King James Version says “perfect,” newer translations reach for “blameless” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. Dig into 14-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8535 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Job 7 verses 50%
- Psalms 2 verses 14%
- Song of Solomon 2 verses 14%
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 14 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 86%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 14%
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: Perfect 6×, Undefiled 2×
- American Standard Version: Perfect 5×, Undefiled 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Blameless 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Blameless 8×, Innocent 2×, Perfect one 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8535 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H8535 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H8535 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8535 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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.
- 1. complete, perfect: in beauty Ct 5:2; 6:9; of physical strength ψ 73:4 (read לָ֑מוֹ תָּם Ew De DrSam xxxi Che Bae al.). e.g. Song of Solomon 5:2
- 2. sound, wholesome: אִישׁ תָּם, of Jacob as tent-dweller, opp. Esau, hunter, Gn 25:27 (J; De leutseliger Mann, Di ruhig, still, AV RV plain man; ת׳ here poss. redactional, = 3). e.g. Genesis 25:27
- 3. complete, morally innocent, having integrity: אִישׁ תָּם Jb 1:8; 2:3; ת׳ alone 1:1; 8:20; 9:20, 21, 22 Pr 29:10 ψ 37:37; 64:5.—תַּמִּים Ex 26:24; 36:29 v. [תָּאם]. e.g. Job 1:8
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
adj. complete;—ת׳ Gn 25:27 + 10 times; sf. תַּמָּתִי Ct 5:2; 6:9 (late, except Gn 25:27);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from תמם (tâmam) (H8552) — to be complete.
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.
תָּם I
- 1. perfect, unblemished. Tem. 7ᵇ (opp. בעל מום); B. Kam. 12ᵇ; (Maas. Sh. I, 2 תָּמִים); a. fr.—Fem. תַּמָּה. Sabb. 103ᵇ, v. כְּתִיבָה. Succ. 37ᵃ, v. לְקִיחָה. Tanḥ. Emor 18 (ref. to ול̇ק̇ח̇ת̇ם̇, Lev. XXIII, 40) בל̇ק̇יח̇ה ת̇מ̇ה וכ׳ by a real (honest) purchase: thou darest not steal (a Lulab), and stand with it (before God) &c.; a. e. e.g. Leviticus 23:40
- 2. simple, innocent, artless. Mekh. Bo, s. 18 ארבעה … ואחד תם וכ׳ there are four characters in children (as regards their attitude towards religious ceremonies): one is wise, and one is simple &c.; (Yalk. Ex. 225 טיפש); a. e.
- 3. (law) an innocuous animal, one that did injury for the first time, or before warning had been given, opp. מוּעָד (v. Ex. XXI, 28-36). B. Kam. I, 4 התם משלם וכ׳ the tam pays half-damage from the sale of its own body. Ib. II, 4 איזה הוא תם … משיחזור וכ׳ when is an animal called tam?… When it shows its regret for three days, i.e. when it has done an injury and does not repeat it for three days afterwards; ib. (another opin.) ותם כל שיהו וכ׳ tam is one which does not gore when children touch it; a. v. fr.—Pl. תַּמִּים, תַּמִּין. Ib. I, 4 חמשה ת׳ וכ׳ there are five classes of tammin, i.e. an animal is considered a tam with regard to five classes of damages (so as to require legal warning): with regard to goring, striking &c.; a. e. e.g. Exodus 21:28
תָּם II
- = h. שָׁם, there, esp. (in Talmud Babli) in Palestine. Ḥull. 59ᵇ (in Hebr. dict.) שלחו מִתָּם וכ׳ they sent word from Palestine: the practice is in agreement with &c. Bets. 4ᵇ; a. fr.—V. הָתָם, תַּמָּן.
תֹּם
- , v. תֹּום
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 9 distinct written forms H8535 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8535, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
