תֹּף
timbrel
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 8 times (47%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 7 times (41%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 2 times (12%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 17 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8596 appears — 16 distinct verses across 11 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
Exodus 1 verse
Judges 1 verse
1 Samuel 2 verses
- 1 Samuel 10:5 וְ/תֹף֙ conj + n c ms After that you shall come to the hill of God, where is the garrison of the Philistines: and it shall happen, when you are come there to the city, that you shall meet a band of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tambourine, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they will be prophesying:
- 1 Samuel 18:6 בְּ/תֻפִּ֥ים prep + n c mp It happened as they came, when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tambourines, with joy, and with instruments of music.
2 Samuel 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 81:2 תֹ֑ף n c ms Raise a song, and bring here the tambourine, The pleasant lyre with the harp.
- Psalms 149:3 בְּ/תֹ֥ף prep + n c ms Let them praise his name in the dance! Let them sing praises to him with tambourine and harp!
- Psalms 150:4 בְ/תֹ֣ף prep + n c ms Praise him with tambourine and dancing! Praise him with stringed instruments and flute!
Isaiah 3 verses
- Isaiah 5:12 תֹּ֧ף n c ms The harp, lyre, tambourine, and flute, with wine, are at their feasts; But they don't regard the work of Yahweh, Neither have they considered the operation of his hands.
- Isaiah 24:8 תֻּפִּ֔ים n c mp The mirth of tambourines ceases, the noise of those who rejoice ends, the joy of the harp ceases.
- Isaiah 30:32 בְּ/תֻפִּ֖ים prep + n c mp Every stroke of the appointed staff, which Yahweh shall lay on him, shall be with [the sound of] tambourines and harps; and in battles with the brandishing [of his arm] will he fight with them.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 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.
תף (tôph) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “timbrel.” Debuting at Genesis 31:27, it then recurs through the corpus. With 16 verses in 11 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. From the same root come תפף and תפת. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8596 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 →
- 16
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 16 distinct verses.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 16 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 16 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 56%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 31%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 13%
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: Tabrets 4×, Timbrel 4×, Timbrels 4×
- American Standard Version: Timbrel 5×, Timbrels 5×, Tabrets 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Tambourines 11×, Tambourine 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Tambourine 7×, Tambourines 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8596 across 17 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8596 across 17 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 H8596 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears 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 H8596 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- timbrel, tambourine
Word origin
n.m. timbrel, tambourine;—abs. ת׳ Gn 31:27 +; pl. תֻּפִּים Ju 11:34 +; sf. תֻּפֶּ֫יךָ Ez 28:13, תֻּפַּ֫יִךְ Je 31:4;—timbrel, held and struck with hand, especially by dancing women, often with other musical instr.:—sign of merriment, gladness Gn 31:27 (E) Jb 21:12, revelry Is 5:12; מְשׂוֹשׂ ת׳ 24:8, cf. Je 31:4; Ez 28:19 (Co setting); triumph Ex 15:20(×2) (E) Ju 11:34; 1 S 18:6; Is 30:32; used by prophets in ecstasy 1 S 10:5; in praise of י׳ 2 S 6:5 ‖ 1 Ch 13:8, ψ 81:3; 149:3; 150:4.—Vid. PrinceEB Music, § 3.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from תפף (tâphaph) (H8608) — to play timbrel.
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.
תַּף
- , v. תְּפַף
תֹּף
- , v. תּוֹף, תּוּפָּא.
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 14 distinct written forms H8596 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ/תֹ֥ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 31:27 | 2 |
| בְּ/תֻפִּ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 15:20 | 2 |
| וּ/בְ/תֻפִּ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 13:8 | 2 |
| בְ/תֹ֣ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 150:4 | 1 |
| בְ/תֻפִּ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 11:34 | 1 |
| בְּ/תֻפִּ֥ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 18:6 | 1 |
| הַ/תֹּ֖ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 15:20 | 1 |
| וְ/תֹף֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 10:5 | 1 |
| כְּ/תֹ֣ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Job 21:12 | 1 |
| תֹ֑ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 81:2 | 1 |
| תֻפַּ֔יִ/ךְ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Jeremiah 31:4 | 1 |
| תֹּ֧ף | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 5:12 | 1 |
| תֻּפִּ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 24:8 | 1 |
| תֻּפֶּ֤י/ךָ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Ezekiel 28:13 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8596, 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 → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 16 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 16 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
- Genesis 31:27
- Exodus 15:20
- Judges 11:34
- 1 Samuel 10:5
- 2 Samuel 6:5
- 1 Chronicles 13:8
- Job 21:12
- Psalms 81:2
- Isaiah 5:12
- Jeremiah 31:4
- Ezekiel 28:13
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.
