Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

תְּפִלָּה

prayer

‘prayer’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓

H8605 Strong's Hebrew
tᵉphillâh Transliteration
/tef-il-law'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 77 appearances

Compare with another word →

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.

The Hebrew noun תפלה centers on the idea of “prayer.” The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. It appears 70 verses across 14 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its moderately common vocabulary. The word gravitates to Psalms (41%), then 2 Chronicles and 1 Kings. Debuting at 2 Samuel 7:27, it then recurs through the corpus. Dig into 70-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
prayer
Modern gloss
prayer
Strong's 1890 agrees
Strong's 1890 and current BDB scholarship align on this entry's primary sense — a good signal that the gloss above is unambiguous and stable. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H8605 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 →

70
distinct verses
The word appears in 70 distinct verses.
14 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 14 of 39 Old Testament books.
2 Samuel 7:27
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in 2 Samuel 7:27.
Habakkuk 3:1
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Habakkuk 3:1.
#519
by frequency
Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 519 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 70 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 24 · 34%
  • Wisdom 33 · 47%
  • Prophets 13 · 19%

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 70 distinct verses.

  • Writings (Ketuvim) 52 verses · 74%
  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 18 verses · 26%

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: Prayer 64×, Let my prayer 2×, Prayers 2×
  • American Standard Version: Prayer 51×, Hearken unto the prayer 2×, I have heard thy prayer 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Prayer 61×, Prayers 5×, May my prayer 2×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Prayer 58×, Prayer of 12×, And 2×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H8605 across 77 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Prayer” 64×
  • “Let my prayer” 2×
  • “Prayers” 2×

Plus 9 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 H8605 across 72 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Prayer” 51×
  • “Hearken unto the prayer” 2×
  • “I have heard thy prayer” 2×
  • “Let my prayer” 2×

Plus 15 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 H8605 across 76 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Prayer” 61×
  • “Prayers” 5×
  • “May my prayer” 2×

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 1 further occurrence.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H8605 across 78 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Prayer” 58×
  • “Prayer of” 12×
  • “And” 2×
  • “Or a prayer” 2×

Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


6 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 6 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.
    • a. prayer, 1 K 8:38 = 2 Ch 6:29; Is 1:15 ψ 35:13; 80:5 +. e.g. 1 Kings 8:38
    • b. pray a prayer, הִתְפ׳ ת׳ 2 S 7:27; 1 K 8:54 (cf. v 28, 29 = 2 Ch 6:19, 20); דִּבֶּר בַּתּ׳ Dn 9:21; specif. of intercession, נשׂא ת׳, c. בְּעַד in behalf of 2 K 19:4 = Is 37:4; Je 7:16; 11:14. e.g. 2 Samuel 7:27
    • c. ת׳ אֶל־אֱלֹהִים 2 Ch 33:18, לְאֵל ψ 42:9, cf. 69:14; c. vb. + לפני 88:3; 141:2; תּ׳ תְּקַדְּמֶ֑ךָּ 88:14. e.g. 2 Chronicles 33:18
    • d. בית ת׳ Is 56:7(×2) house of prayer (temple); c. vb. + אֶל־י׳ + אל־היכל Jon 2:8; c. vb. + למעון קדשׁו 2 Ch 30:27. e.g. Isaiah 56:7
    • e. hear prayer is ת׳ (אֶת־) שׁמע 1 K 8:45, 49 = 2 Ch 6:35, 39, 1 K 9:3 ψ 4:2; 39:13 + 9 times; שׁמע אֶל־ת׳ 1 K 8:28, 29 = 2 Ch 6:19, 20; Ne 1:6; Dn 9:17; פנה אל ת׳ 1 K 8:28 = 2 Ch 6:19, ψ 102:18; אָזְנֶיךָ קַשֻּׁבוֹת לת׳ 2 Ch 6:40; 7:15, cf. Ne 1:11 (אֶל), הַקְשִׁיבָה ת׳ ψ 61:2; הִקְשִׁיב בְּקוֹל ת׳ 66:19; הַאֲזִינָה ת׳ 17:1; 55:2; 86:6; לקח ת׳ 6:10; cf. 66:20; 102:18b. e.g. 1 Kings 8:45
  • 2. in ψ-titles, poetic, liturgical prayer ψ 17:1; 86:1; 90:1; 102:1; 142:1 Hb 3:1; of Davidic Psalter, תפלות דוד ψ 72:20. e.g. Psalms 17:1

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.f. prayer;—ת׳ Is 1:15 +, cstr. תְּפִלַּת ψ 80:5 +; sf. תְּפִלָּתִי 4:2 +, etc.; pl. תְּפִלּוֹת 72:20;—

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from פלל (pâlal) (H6419) — to pray.

Part of speech: Noun Feminine TWOT: 1776a


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.

תִּפְלָה

  • [mud, slime,] frivolity, trivial cause; impropriety, indecency. Ab. Zar. 63ᵇ (in Chald. dict.) כל למעוטי תי׳ שפיר דמי anything to diminish folly (idolatry) is right. Ib. 64ᵃ ואלו למעט את הת׳ שפיר דמי Ms. M. (ed. ואלו למעוטי ת׳ שרי) but in this case, as it serves to diminish folly (the sin of כִּלְאַיִם), it is right. Tosef. Sot. VI, 8 אי אפשר לעמוד על תִּיפְלָתָם Var. (ed. Zuck. התָּפֵל) it is impossible to understand their frivolous ways; a. e.—Lam. R. to II, 14 נאמר בנביאי שומרון ת׳ … ירושלים ת׳ of the prophets of Samaria the word tiflah is used (Jer. XXIII, 13) …, and of the prophets of Jerusalem the word tiflah (tafel) is used (Lam. l. c.). e.g. Jeremiah 23:13

תְּפִלָּה

  • [intercession, pleading,] prayer, esp. T’fillah, the Prayer of Benedictions to be said three times every day, four times on the Sabbath and the festivals (v. מוּסַף), and five times on the Day of Atonement and public fast-days (v. נְעִילָה). Taan. 2ᵃ ומנלן דבת׳ and whence do you prove that the mention of, and the prayer for rain must be inserted in the T’fillah? Ib. עבודה שבלב זו ת׳, v. עֲבוֹדָה. Ber. IV, 1 תְּפִלַּת השחר the morning T’fillah, ת׳ המנחה the afternoon T’fillah &c. (v. respective determinants). Ib. 5ᵃ אלו הם יסורין … בטול ת׳ sufferings of love are those with which no cessation of prayer is connected. Ib. 6ᵇ הקובע מקום לתְפִלָּתוֹ he that has a regular place for his prayers. Ib. 31ᵇ שאסור לישב … של ת׳ that it is forbidden to sit down within four cubits distance from one in prayer; a. v. fr.—Ib. 31ᵃ, a. fr. שומע ת׳ (abbrev. ש"ת) ‘hearer of prayer’, the fifteenth section of the Prayer of Benedictions which closes with, ‘blessed be thou, O Lord, the hearer of prayer.’—Pl. תְּפִלּוֹת, תְּפִי׳. Ib. 26ᵇ ת׳ אבות תקנום the patriarchs introduced regular prayers. Ib. ת׳ כנגד תמידין תקנום prayers (T’filloth) have been instituted so as to correspond to the daily offerings. Sabb. 30ᵃ כמה ת׳ ותחנונים ever so many prayers and supplications; a. v. fr.

תְּפִלָּה ²

  • II f., sing. of תְּפִלִּין, q. v.

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 48 distinct written forms H8605 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
הַ/תְּפִלָּ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Kings 8:28 4
תְּפִלָּתִ֑/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 54:2 4
תְּפִלָּתִֽ/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Lamentations 3:8 4
תְפִלָּתִ֑/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 17:1 3
תְּפִלַּ֣ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Nehemiah 1:6 3
תְּפִלָּתֶ֔/ךָ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Chronicles 7:12 3
תְּפִלָּתָ֖/ם Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 1 Kings 8:45 3
וּ/תְפִלַּ֖ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Proverbs 15:8 2
וּ/תְפִלָּת֣/וֹ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Chronicles 33:18 2
וּ֝/תְפִלָּתִ֗/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 35:13 2
לִ/תְפִלַּ֖ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Chronicles 6:40 2
תְפִלָּ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 19:4 2
תְפִלָּֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 109:4 2
תְּֽפִלָּתִ֥/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 6:9 2
תְּפִלַּ֧ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 1 Kings 8:28 2
תְּפִלָּ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Daniel 9:3 2
תְּפִלָּ֗ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 17:1 2
תְּפִלָּ֣ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Kings 8:38 2
תְּפִלָּתִ֔/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Isaiah 56:7 2
בִּ/תְפִלַּ֥ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 80:4 1
בַּ/תְּפִלָּ֑ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Daniel 9:21 1
הַ/תְּפִלָּ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Samuel 7:27 1
הַ/תְּפִלָּ֥ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Kings 8:54 1
וּ/תְפִלָּ֑ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 11:14 1
וּ/תְפִלָּ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 7:16 1
וּ֝/תְפִלָּת֗/וֹ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 109:7 1
וּֽ/תְפִלָּתִ֥/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Job 16:17 1
לַ/תְּפִלָּ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Nehemiah 11:17 1
תְפִלּ֑וֹת Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct Psalms 72:20 1
תְפִלָּ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Isaiah 1:15 1
תְפִלָּתִ֨/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 39:12 1
תְפִלָּתִֽ/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 69:13 1
תְפִלָּתָ֛/ם Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Chronicles 30:27 1
תְּ֝פִלָּ֗ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 42:8 1
תְּ֝פִלָּת֗/וֹ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Proverbs 28:9 1
תְּ֭פִלָּה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 102:1 1
תְּפִלַּ֤ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Daniel 9:17 1
תְּפִלַּ֨ת Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Nehemiah 1:11 1
תְּפִלָּ֑ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 65:2 1
תְּפִלָּ֥ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Isaiah 56:7 1
תְּפִלָּֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Lamentations 3:44 1
תְּפִלָּה֮ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Psalms 90:1 1
תְּפִלָּתְ/ךָ֣ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 1 Kings 9:3 1
תְּפִלָּתִ֗/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 143:1 1
תְּפִלָּתִ֣/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 141:2 1
תְּפִלָּתִ֥/י Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 66:20 1
תְּפִלָּתָ/ם֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 2 Chronicles 6:39 1
תְּפִלָּתָֽ/ם Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct Psalms 102:17 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8605, 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 → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 63 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 70 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.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.