בּוּז
to despise
also: hold in contempt, hold as insignificant 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H936 appears in the Book of Song of Solomon — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Song of Solomon
- Song of Solomon 8:1 יָב֥וּזוּ Qal impf 3mp Oh that you were like my brother, Who sucked the breasts of my mother! If I found you outside, I would kiss you; Yes, and no one would despise me.
- Song of Solomon 8:7 בּ֖וֹז יָב֥וּזוּ Qal inf.abs Qal impf 3mp Many waters can't quench love, Neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, He would be utterly scorned. Friends
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.
בוז (bûwz) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to despise.” It clusters heavily in Proverbs, which alone accounts for 73% of its uses. With 11 verses in 3 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at Proverbs 1:7, it then recurs through the corpus. It also covers “hold in contempt” and “hold as insignificant”, alongside “to despise” — see its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H936 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Proverbs 8 verses 73%
- Song of Solomon 2 verses 18%
- Zechariah 1 verse 9%
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 11 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 91%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 9%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Despiseth 2×
- American Standard Version†: He that despiseth 2×, Thee 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Despise 3×, He who despises 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Despise 5×, One despising 3×, They would 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H936 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H936 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H936 across 11† 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H936 across 16† 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.
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 5 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.
בוז I despise (NH id.)
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. בַּז Zc 4:10 (Köi. 439); fem. בָּזָ֫ה 2 K 19:21 (GK 72l) Impf. יָבוּז Pr 23:9; 3 fs. וְתָבֻז Pr 30:17; 2 ms. תָּבוּז (juss.) Pr 23:22; pl. יָבוּזוּ Pr 6:30 Ct 8:7; יָבֻזוּ Ct 8:1; Inf. abs. בּוֹז Ct 8:7; Pt. Pr 11:12 + 12 times;—despise, shew despite toward (WisdLt & poet.) c. acc. Pr 1:7; c. Inf. + ל Pr 30:17; elsewhere sq. ל + noun, Pr 6:30; 11:12; 13:13; 14:21; 23:9, 22 Ct 8:1, 7(×2) Zc 4:10. e.g. Zechariah 4:10
בוז II
- 1. contempt springing from pride and wickedness Jb 31:34 ψ 123:3, 4 (‖ לַעַג); joined in one adverb. phr. with גאוה ψ 31:19 בְּג׳ וָב׳; springing from prosperity and ease Jb 12:5; = object of contempt Gn 38:23 Pr 12:8; ‖ חֶרְפָּה ψ 119:22 Pr 18:3. e.g. Job 31:34
- 2. judicial, poured out (שׁפך) by God, in judgment Jb 12:21 = ψ 107:40. e.g. Job 12:21
בוז III m. (cf. Assyrian n.pr.loc. Bâzu DlPa 307
- 1. 2nd son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother Gn 22:21 J; = tribe named with דְּדָן & תֵּימָא Je 25:23. e.g. Genesis 22:21
- 2. a Gadite 1 Ch 5:14. e.g. 1 Chronicles 5:14
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
I. vb. despise (NH id.)—
II. n.m. Pr 18:3 contempt—בּ׳ abs. Gn 38:23 + 9 times; cstr. Jb 31:34;—(WisdLt & poet., except Gn 38:23 J).
III. n.pr.m. (cf. Assyrian n.pr.loc. Bâzu DlPa 307; ZK 1885, 93 f.)
— 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.
בּוּז
- 1. to tread upon, whence despise. Aboth IV, 3 אל תהי בָז despise not &c.
- 2. to divide; v. בִּזְבֵּז.
בּוּז ²
- 1. to plunder, ransack. Targ. Gen. XXXIV, 27; a. fr.—Esth. R. to I, 10 (play on בזתא ibid.) בוז ביתיה plunder his house.
- 2. to tread. Ib. (play on בגתא ואבגתא ibid. as if from בג, cmp. בגד) בוז ובזבז tread and shatter (v. Targ. Esth. a. l.; cmp. בָּזוֹזָא). [Most of the forms may be derived fr. בזז.]
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 10 distinct written forms H936 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| בָּז | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 11:12 | 2 |
| יָב֥וּזוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Song of Solomon 8:1 | 2 |
| בַז֮ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Zechariah 4:10 | 1 |
| בּ֖וֹז | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Absolute | Song of Solomon 8:7 | 1 |
| בָּ֣ז | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 13:13 | 1 |
| בָּֽזוּ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Proverbs 1:7 | 1 |
| וְ/תָב֪וּז | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 30:17 | 1 |
| יָ֝ב֗וּז | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 23:9 | 1 |
| יָב֣וּזוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Proverbs 6:30 | 1 |
| תָּ֝ב֗וּז | Verb, Qal, Jussive, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Proverbs 23:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H936, 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 11 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
