בָּבֶל
Babylon
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Babylon’ 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
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H895 appears — 21 distinct verses across 2 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.
Ezra 7 verses
- Ezra 5:12 בָּבֶ֖ל לְ/בָבֶֽל n Proper prep + n Proper But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon.
- Ezra 5:13 בָבֶ֑ל n Proper But in the first year of Cyrus king of Babylon, Cyrus the king made a decree to build this house of God.
- Ezra 5:14 בָבֶ֑ל בָבֶ֔ל n Proper n Proper The gold and silver vessels also of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that was in Jerusalem, and brought into the temple of Babylon, those did Cyrus the king take out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered to one whose name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor;
- Ezra 5:17 בְּ/בָבֶל֒ prep + n Proper Now therefore, if it seem good to the king, let there be search made in the king's treasure-house, which is there at Babylon, whether it be so, that a decree was made of Cyrus the king to build this house of God at Jerusalem; and let the king send his pleasure to us concerning this matter.
- Ezra 6:1 בְּ/בָבֶֽל prep + n Proper Then Darius the king made a decree, and search was made in the house of the archives, where the treasures were laid up in Babylon.
- Ezra 6:5 לְ/בָבֶ֑ל prep + n Proper Also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of the temple which is at Jerusalem, and brought to Babylon, be restored, and brought again to the temple which is at Jerusalem, everyone to its place; and you shall put them in the house of God.
- Ezra 7:16 בָּבֶ֑ל n Proper and all the silver and gold that you shall find in all the province of Babylon, with the freewill-offering of the people, and of the priests, offering willingly for the house of their God which is in Jerusalem;
Daniel 14 verses
- Daniel 2:12 בָבֶֽל n Proper For this cause the king was angry and very furious, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:14 בָּבֶֽל n Proper Then Daniel returned answer with counsel and prudence to Arioch the captain of the king's guard, who was gone forth to kill the wise men of Babylon;
- Daniel 2:18 בָבֶֽל n Proper that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should nor perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:24 בָבֶ֑ל בָבֶל֙ n Proper n Proper Therefore Daniel went in to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon; he went and said thus to him: Don't destroy the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will show to the king the interpretation.
- Daniel 2:48 בָּבֶ֑ל בָבֶֽל n Proper n Proper Then the king made Daniel great, and gave him many great gifts, and made him to rule over the whole province of Babylon, and to be chief governor over all the wise men of Babylon.
- Daniel 2:49 בָּבֶ֔ל n Proper Daniel requested of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon: but Daniel was in the gate of the king.
- Daniel 3:1 בָּבֶֽל n Proper Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, and the breadth of it six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.
- Daniel 3:12 בָּבֶ֔ל n Proper There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; these men, O king, have not regarded you: they don't serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.
- Daniel 3:30 בָּבֶֽל n Proper Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.
- Daniel 4:6 בָבֶ֑ל n Proper Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream.
- Daniel 4:29 בָבֶ֖ל n Proper At the end of twelve months he was walking in the royal palace of Babylon.
- Daniel 4:30 בָּבֶ֣ל n Proper The king spoke and said, Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?
- Daniel 5:7 בָבֶ֗ל n Proper The king cried aloud to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. The king spoke and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whoever shall read this writing, and show me the interpretation of it, shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.
- Daniel 7:1 בָּבֶ֔ל n Proper In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head on his bed: then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters.
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.
“Babylon” is the headline sense of the Hebrew name בבל (Babel). More than two-thirds of its appearances fall in Daniel. It appears 21 verses across 2 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. First canonically at Ezra 5:12, it enters the text early. See 21-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H895 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 →
- 21
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 21 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,282
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,282 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 21 occurrences in the concordance →
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 21 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 21 verses · 100%
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: Babylon 17×, Men of babylon 8×
- American Standard Version: Babylon 17×, Men of babylon 8×
- Berean Standard Bible: Babylon 23×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Babylon 25×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H895 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H895 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H895 across 24 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H895 across 26 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.
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.
- Babel or Babylon = "confusion (by mixing)"
- Babel or Babylon, the ancient site and/or capital of Babylonia (modern Hillah) situated on the Euphrates
Word origin
n.pr.loc. Babel, Babylon (in Assyrian written Bâb-ili, gate of god DlPa 212, cf. on other hand JenKosmol. 498)—c. ָהloc. בָּבֶ֫לָה Ez 12:13 +, בָּבֶ֑לָה 2 K 20:17 + once מִכָּבֶ֫לָה Je 27:16;—the ancient capital of Babylonia, mod. Hillah, situated on Euphrates, in long. c. 44° 30’ E., and lat. c. 32° 50’ N.; Gn 10:10; 11:9 (where name connected with בלל confuse, confound), both J, not elsewhere in Hex; 2 K 17:24 + 31 times 2 K; 18 times Chr; Est 2:6; late ψ 87:4; 137:1, 8; Is 2, 3, viz. 13:1, 9; 14:4, 22; 21:9; 39:1, 3, 6, 7; 43:14; 47:1; 48:14, 20; Mi 4:10 (but here prob. not orig., cf. RSProph. vii. n. 5 & reff.) Zc 2:11; 6:10 Dn 1:1 Ez 12:13 + 19 times Ez; Je 20:4(×2) 5, 6 + 165 times Je;—note especially אֶרֶץ בּ׳ Je 50:28; also of land & people = realm, partic. in מֶלֶךְ בּ׳ 2 K 20:12 of Merodach Baladan; v 18; 24:1, 7, 11, 12(×2) + often of Nebuchadrezzar; 2 K 25:27 = Je 52:31 cf. v 34 of Evil-Merodach; Ne 13:6 of Artaxerxes; the city personif. as בַּת בָּבֶל Is 47:1 Je 50:42. (See DlPa 212 COT Gn 11:9; KG 95.)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from בבל (Bâbel) (H894) — Babylon.
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.
בָּבֶל
- (b. h.) pr. n. Babel, the city of Babylon; Babylonia, a country of varying limits, chiefly comprising Mesopotamia, a portion of Great Armenia and some neighbouring countries east of the Tigris (v. Neub. Géogr. p. 320). [Owing to the continued political disturbances in Palestine, Babylonia gradually became the centre of Jewish scholarship; hence both the frequent comparisons and jealousies between the East and the West (Babyl. a. Palest.); cmp. אֶרֶץ, חֲנַנְיָה, תַּלְמוּד. Kidd. 69ᵇ; 71ᵇ. Sot. 49ᵇ. Y. Snh. I, 19ᵃ; Y. Ned. VI, 40ᵃ bot. כי מב׳ תצא וכ׳ (sarcastic imitation of Is. II, 3). Snh. 24ᵃ תלמודה של ב׳ Babylonian method (Talmud). עולי ב׳ those coming from Bab. to visit the Temple, pilgrims. Ned. V, 4 דבר של ע׳ ב׳ that in which pilgrims from Bab. (i.e. Jews living abroad) have a share, as the Temple Mount &c. [Macc. 24ᵃ, a. e. המונה של ב׳, read רומי as Ms. M.; cmp. אֲרָמִי.] e.g. Isaiah 2:3
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 15 distinct written forms H895 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בָבֶ֑ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:24 | 4 |
| בָבֶֽל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:12 | 3 |
| בָּבֶ֔ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:49 | 3 |
| בָּבֶֽל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:14 | 3 |
| בָּבֶ֑ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:48 | 2 |
| בָבֶ֔ל | Noun, Proper | Ezra 5:14 | 1 |
| בָבֶ֖ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 4:29 | 1 |
| בָבֶ֗ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 5:7 | 1 |
| בָבֶל֙ | Noun, Proper | Daniel 2:24 | 1 |
| בְּ/בָבֶֽל | Noun, Proper | Ezra 6:1 | 1 |
| בְּ/בָבֶל֒ | Noun, Proper | Ezra 5:17 | 1 |
| בָּבֶ֖ל | Noun, Proper | Ezra 5:12 | 1 |
| בָּבֶ֣ל | Noun, Proper | Daniel 4:30 | 1 |
| לְ/בָבֶ֑ל | Noun, Proper | Ezra 6:5 | 1 |
| לְ/בָבֶֽל | Noun, Proper | Ezra 5:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H895, 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
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 → 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Babylon). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
The Greek form of BABEL; Semitic form Babilu, meaning "The Gate of God." In the Assyrian tablets it means "The city of the dispersion of the tribes." The monumental list of its kings reaches back to B.C. 2300, and includes Khammurabi, or Amraphel (q.v.), the contemporary of Abraham. It stood on the Euphrates, about 200 miles above its junction with the Tigris, which flowed through its midst and divided it into two almost equal parts. The Elamites invaded Chaldea (i.e., Lower Mesopotamia, or Shinar, and Upper Mesopotamia, or Accad, now combined into one) and held it in subjection. At length Khammu-rabi delivered it from the foreign yoke, and founded the new empire of Chaldea (q.v.), making Babylon the capital of the united kingdom. This city gradually grew in extent and grandeur, but in process of time it became subject to Assyria. On the fall of Nineveh (B.C. 606) it threw off the Assyrian yoke, and became the capital of the growing Babylonian empire. Under Nebuchadnezzar it became one of the most splendid cities of the ancient world.
After passing through various vicissitudes the city was occupied by Cyrus, "king of Elam," B.C. 538, who issued a decree permitting the Jews to return to their own land (Ezra 1). It then ceased to be the capital of an empire. It was again and again visited by hostile armies, till its inhabitants were all driven from their homes, and the city became a complete desolation, its very site being forgotten from among men.
On the west bank of the Euphrates, about 50 miles south of Bagdad, there is found a series of artificial mounds of vast extent. These are the ruins of this once famous proud city. These ruins are principally (1) the great mound called Babil by the Arabs. This was probably the noted Temple of Belus, which was a pyramid about 480 feet high. (2) The Kasr (i.e., "the palace"). This was the great palace of Nebuchadnezzar. It is almost a square, each side of which is about 700 feet long. The little town of Hillah, near the site of Babylon, is built almost wholly of bricks taken from this single mound. (3) A lofty mound, on the summit of which stands a modern tomb called Amran ibn-Ali. This is probably the most ancient portion of the remains of the city, and represents the ruins of the famous hanging-gardens, or perhaps of some royal palace. The utter desolation of the city once called "The glory of kingdoms" (Isa. 13:19) was foretold by the prophets (Isa. 13:4-22; Jer. 25:12; 50:2, 3; Dan. 2:31-38).
The Babylon mentioned in 1 Pet. 5:13 was not Rome, as some have thought, but the literal city of Babylon, which was inhabited by many Jews at the time Peter wrote.
In Rev. 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; and 18:2, "Babylon" is supposed to mean Rome, not considered as pagan, but as the prolongation of the ancient power in the papal form. Rome, pagan and papal, is regarded as one power. "The literal Babylon was the beginner and supporter of tyranny and idolatry...This city and its whole empire were taken by the Persians under Cyrus; the Persians were subdued by the Macedonians, and the Macedonians by the Romans; so that Rome succeeded to the power of old Babylon. And it was her method to adopt the worship of the false deities she had conquered; so that by her own act she became the heiress and successor of all the Babylonian idolatry, and of all that was introduced into it by the immediate successors of Babylon, and consequently of all the idolatry of the earth." Rome, or "mystical Babylon," is "that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth" (17:18).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
in the Apocalypse, is the symbolical name by which Rome is denoted. (Revelation 14:8; 17:18) The power of Rome was regarded by the later Jews as was that of Babylon by their forefathers. Comp. (Jeremiah 51:7) with Reve 14:8 The occurrence of this name in (1 Peter 5:13) has given rise to a variety of conjectures, many giving it the same meaning as in the Apocalypse; others refer it to Babylon in Asia, and others still to Babylon in Egypt. The most natural supposition of all is that by Babylon is intended the old Babylon of Assyria, which was largely inhabited by Jews at the time in question.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
same as Babel
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 20 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 21 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.
