תַּעָב
to abhor
also: be abominable, do abominably fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Piel verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘regard as an abomination’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
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).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms 17 distinct
- Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular 3 times (14%)
- Verb, Niphal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Piel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 2 times (9%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Piel, Infinitive Absolute 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Piel, Cohortative, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (5%)
- Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (5%)
+9 more forms (9 occurrences)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 22 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8581 appears — 20 distinct verses across 9 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.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 7:26 וְ/תַעֵ֥ב תְּֽתַעֲבֶ֖/נּוּ conj + Piel inf.abs Piel impf 2ms + sfx pers 3ms You shall not bring an abomination into your house, and become a devoted thing like it: you shall utterly detest it, and you shall utterly abhor it; for it is a devoted thing.
- Deuteronomy 23:7 תְתַעֵ֣ב תְתַעֵ֣ב Piel impf 2ms Piel impf 2ms You shall not abhor an Edomite; for he is your brother: you shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you lived as a foreigner in his land.
1 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Job 4 verses
- Job 9:31 וְ֝/תִֽעֲב֗וּ/נִי conj + Piel wpf 3cp + sfx pers 1cs Yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
- Job 15:16 נִתְעָ֥ב Niphal ptcp.act ms How much less one who is abominable and corrupt, A man who drinks iniquity like water!
- Job 19:19 תִּֽ֭עֲבוּ/נִי Piel pf 3cp + sfx pers 1cs All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me.
- Job 30:10 תִּֽ֭עֲבוּ/נִי Piel pf 3cp + sfx pers 1cs They abhor me, they stand aloof from me, And don't hesitate to spit in my face.
Psalms 6 verses
- Psalms 5:6 יְתָ֘עֵ֥ב Piel impf 3ms You will destroy those who speak lies. Yahweh abhors the blood-thirsty and deceitful man.
- Psalms 14:1 הִֽתְעִ֥יבוּ Hiphil pf 3cp The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good.
- Psalms 53:1 וְ/הִֽתְעִ֥יבוּ conj + Hiphil pf 3cp The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity. There is no one who does good.
- Psalms 106:40 וַ֝/יְתָעֵ֗ב conj + Piel wimpf 3ms Therefore Yahweh burned with anger against his people. He abhorred his inheritance.
- Psalms 107:18 תְּתַעֵ֣ב Piel impf 3fs Their soul abhors all kinds of food. They draw near to the gates of death.
- Psalms 119:163 וַ/אֲתַעֵ֑בָה conj + Piel coh 1cs I hate and abhor falsehood. I love your law.
Isaiah 2 verses
- Isaiah 14:19 נִתְעָ֔ב Niphal ptcp.act ms But you are cast forth away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot.
- Isaiah 49:7 לִ/מְתָ֤עֵֽב prep + Piel ptcp.act ms cs Thus says Yahweh, the Redeemer of Israel, [and] his Holy One, to him whom man despises, to him whom the nation abhors, to a servant of rulers: Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall worship; because of Yahweh who is faithful, [even] the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 16:25 וַ/תְּתַֽעֲבִי֙ conj + Piel wimpf 2fs You have built your lofty place at the head of every way, and have made your beauty an abomination, and have opened your feet to everyone who passed by, and multiplied your prostitution.
- Ezekiel 16:52 הִתְעַ֥בְתְּ Hiphil pf 2fs You also, bear you your own shame, in that you have given judgment for your sisters; through your sins that you have committed more abominable than they, they are more righteous that you: yes, be also confounded, and bear your shame, in that you have justified your sisters.
Amos 1 verse
Micah 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.
תעב — transliterated taʻâb — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to abhor.” Debuting at Deuteronomy 7:26, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 20 verses in 9 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Psalms (30% of all occurrences). As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Niphal, Piel, and more). See the sense tree, 20-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8581 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 →
- 20
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 20 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,412
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,412 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 20 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Psalms 6 verses 30%
- Job 4 verses 20%
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 10%
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 20 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 11 verses · 55%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 35%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 10%
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: Abhor 3×, Abhorreth 2×, They abhor 2×
- American Standard Version: Abhor 3×, Abhorreth 3×, They abhor 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Despise 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Abominably 3×, Detest 2×, They do 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8581 across 22 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 H8581 across 22 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 H8581 across 21 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 18 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 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8581 across 28 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 19 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
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 4 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.
Niphal
- . be abhorred
Piel
- 1. regard as an abomination, abhor
- 2. cause to be an abomination
Hiphil
- . make abominable, do abominably
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
[ תַּעָב ] vb. denom. Niph. Pi.
— 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.
תָּעֵב
- , v. תָּאֵב
תָּעַב
- v. תּוֹעֵבָה, to feel nauseous, to loathe. [Midr. Till. to Ps. VII התועב את עצמו, v. תָּבַע.]
- 1. to loathe, abominate. Sabb. 104ᵃ (play on א"ת) אותי ת׳ אתאוה לו me (the Lord) he loathes, shall I have desire for him?
- 2. to declare an abomination, to forbid. Ab. Zar. 66ᵃ (ref. to Deut. XIV, 3) כל שתִּיעַבְתִּי לך וכ׳ whatever I have declared an abomination for thee (whatever I have forbidden thee) comes under the category of ‘thou shalt not eat’ (all kinds of forbidden food come under the same category, hence can be combined to make up the legal quantity); Ḥull. 114ᵇ כל שתעבתי וכ׳ whatever I have forbidden thee, it is forbidden to eat (even if the text does not say explicitly, ‘thou shalt not eat’); Yalk. Deut. 891; a. e.—Part. pass. מְתוֹעָב; f. מְתוֹעֶבֶת. Cant. R. to II, 14, v. עָזַב e.g. Deuteronomy 14:3
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 H8581 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8581, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 18 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 20 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
- Deuteronomy 7:26
- 1 Kings 21:26
- 1 Chronicles 21:6
- Job 9:31
- Psalms 5:6
- Isaiah 14:19
- Ezekiel 16:25
- Amos 5:10
- Micah 3:9
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.
