תְּרָפִים
teraphim
also: idolatry, idols, image, family idol fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H8655 appears — 15 distinct verses across 7 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 3 verses
- Genesis 31:19 הַ/תְּרָפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep: and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father's.
- Genesis 31:34 הַ/תְּרָפִ֗ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, put them in the camel's saddle, and sat on them. Laban felt about all the tent, but didn't find them.
- Genesis 31:35 הַ/תְּרָפִֽים ptcl def.art + n c mp She said to her father, "Don't let my lord be angry that I can't rise up before you; for the manner of women is on me." He searched, but didn't find the teraphim.
Judges 5 verses
- Judges 17:5 וּ/תְרָפִ֔ים conj + n c mp The man Micah had a house of gods, and he made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated one of his sons, who became his priest.
- Judges 18:14 וּ/תְרָפִ֔ים conj + n c mp Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish answered, and said to their brothers, Do you know that there is in these houses an ephod, and teraphim, and an engraved image, and a molten image? now therefore consider what you have to do.
- Judges 18:17 הַ/תְּרָפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp The five men who went to spy out the land went up, and came in there, and took the engraved image, and the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image: and the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the six hundred men girt with weapons of war.
- Judges 18:18 הַ/תְּרָפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp When these went into Micah's house, and fetched the engraved image, the ephod, and the teraphim, and the molten image, the priest said to them, What do you?
- Judges 18:20 הַ/תְּרָפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp The priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the engraved image, and went in the midst of the people.
1 Samuel 3 verses
- 1 Samuel 15:23 וּ/תְרָפִ֖ים conj + n c mp For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because you have rejected the word of Yahweh, he has also rejected you from being king.
- 1 Samuel 19:13 הַ/תְּרָפִ֗ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Michal took the teraphim, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats' [hair] at the head of it, and covered it with the clothes.
- 1 Samuel 19:16 הַ/תְּרָפִ֖ים ptcl def.art + n c mp When the messengers came in, behold, the teraphim was in the bed, with the pillow of goats' [hair] at the head of it.
2 Kings 1 verse
Ezekiel 1 verse
Hosea 1 verse
Zechariah 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.
At its core, תרפים (tᵉrâphîym) means “teraphim.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “images” in the King James Version, “household idols” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 15 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. The word gravitates to Judges (33%), then Genesis and 1 Samuel. Not a single-sense word, it carries 2 senses, among them “idolatry”, “idols”, and “image”. Dig into 15-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8655 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,836
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,836 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 12 verses · 80%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 20%
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: Images 5×, Teraphim 5×
- American Standard Version: Teraphim 11×
- Berean Standard Bible: Household idols 5×, Household gods 2×, Idols 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Teraphim 9×, Idols 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8655 across 15 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 H8655 across 15 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8655 across 15 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8655 across 15 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 2 senses 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.
- idolatry, idols, image(s), teraphim, family idol
- a kind of idol used in household shrine or worship
Word origin
תְּרָפִים n.m. pl. a kind of idol, obj. of reverence, and means of divination (√ and etymol.-mng. dub.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from רפא (râphâʼ) (H7495) — to heal.
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.
תְּרָפִים
- (b. h.) Teraphim, a certain form of idols. Tanḥ. Vayetsé 12 וכי הת׳ מדברים הן do the Teraphim talk? Ib. למה נקראו ת׳ שהן מעשה תורף וכ׳, v. תּוֹרְפָה (v. צִיץ II). Y. Ab. Zar. II, 41ᵇ, v. תַּרְפּוּת. Gen. R. s. 74; a. fr.
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 H8655 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/תְּרָפִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 31:19 | 5 |
| הַ/תְּרָפִ֗ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 31:34 | 2 |
| וּ/תְרָפִ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 17:5 | 2 |
| בַּ/תְּרָפִ֔ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 21:21 | 1 |
| הַ/תְּרָפִ֣ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Zechariah 10:2 | 1 |
| הַ/תְּרָפִ֨ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 2 Kings 23:24 | 1 |
| הַ/תְּרָפִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Genesis 31:35 | 1 |
| וּ/תְרָפִ֖ים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 15:23 | 1 |
| וּ/תְרָפִֽים | Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Hosea 3:4 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8655, 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
- מרפא marpêʼ H4832 healing
- רפא râphâʼ H7496 ghosts
- רפאה rᵉphuʼâh H7499 remedy
- רפאות riphʼûwth H7500 healing
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- ירפאל Yirpᵉʼêl H3416 Irpeel
- רפא râphâʼ H7497 giants
- רפאל Rᵉphâʼêl H7501 Rephael
- רפוא Râphûwʼ H7505 Raphu
- רפיה Rᵉphâyâh H7509 Rephaiah
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. 5 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 15 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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.
