בּוּס
to trample
‘to trample’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Polel
- A stem of hollow/geminate roots functioning like the Piel — intensive active.
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Hithpolel
- The reflexive counterpart of the Polel.
- Hophal
- The passive counterpart of the Hiphil (“he was caused to…”).
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- 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”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
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”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Polel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Hithpolel, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Hophal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H947 appears — 12 distinct verses across 6 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.
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 44:5 נָב֥וּס Qal impf 1cp Through you, will we push down our adversaries. Through your name, will we tread them under who rise up against us.
- Psalms 60:12 יָב֥וּס Qal impf 3ms Through God we shall do valiantly, For it is he who will tread down our adversaries.
- Psalms 108:13 יָב֥וּס Qal impf 3ms Through God, we will do valiantly. For it is he who will tread down our enemies.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 4 verses
- Isaiah 14:19 מוּבָֽס Hophal ptcp.pass ms But you are cast forth away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot.
- Isaiah 14:25 אֲבוּסֶ֑/נּוּ Qal impf 1cs + sfx pers 3ms that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and on my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulder.
- Isaiah 63:6 וְ/אָב֤וּס conj + Qal impf 1cs I trod down the peoples in my anger, and made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.
- Isaiah 63:18 בּוֹסְס֖וּ Polel pf 3cp Your holy people possessed [it] but a little while: our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 16:6 מִתְבּוֹסֶ֖סֶת Hithpolel ptcp.act fs When I passed by you, and saw you weltering in your blood, I said to you, [Though you are] in your blood, live; yes, I said to you, [Though you are] in your blood, live.
- Ezekiel 16:22 מִתְבּוֹסֶ֥סֶת Hithpolel ptcp.act fs In all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and was weltering in your blood.
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.
The Hebrew verb בוס centers on the idea of “to trample.” First canonically at Psalms 44:5, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 12 verses — uncommon. Isaiah dominates its distribution — 4 of 12 verses. Different stems carry different senses — BDB groups them under 2 stems, among them Qal and Hophal. 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 H947 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 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 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 8 verses · 67%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 33%
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: He it is that shall tread down 2×
- American Standard Version: He it is that will tread down 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Will trample 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: He will trample 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H947 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H947 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H947 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H947 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Hophal (the passive of Hiphil).
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 2 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.
Qal
- Impf. יָבוּס ψ 60:14 = 108:14; 3 fs. תָּבוּס Pr 27:7, אָבוּס Is 63:6; sf. 3 s. אֲבוּסֶנּוּ Is 14:25; 1 pl. נָבוּס ψ 44:6;—tread down, trample (of warriors), no obj. expr. Zc 10:5; id., fig. c. acc. (subj. י׳, as warrior) Is 14:25 cf. ψ 60:14 = 108:14 Is 63:6; (subj. men, with God’s help) ψ 44:6; fig. = reject, loathe Pr 27:7. Poʿl. Pf. בּוֹסְסוּ Is 63:18; בֹּסְסוּ Je 12:10—tread down, in bad sense, subj. enemies of י׳, obj. acc. Je 12:10 (in metaph.): = desecrate (obj. מקדשׁ) Is 63:18. Hithpoʿl. Pt. f. מִתְבּוֹסֶסֶת Ez 16:6, 22—of the blind movements of infant’s limbs, kick out (this way and that), fig. of Jerusalem. e.g. Psalms 60:14
Hophal
- Pt. מוּרָ֑ס Is 14:19—pass. trodden down Is 14:19, of corpse, sim. of king of Babylon. e.g. Isaiah 14:19
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
vb. tread down, trample—
— 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.
בּוּס
- , v. בָּסַס
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 11 distinct written forms H947 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יָב֥וּס | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Psalms 60:12 | 2 |
| אֲבוּסֶ֑/נּוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Isaiah 14:25 | 1 |
| בֹּסְס֖וּ | Verb, Polel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Jeremiah 12:10 | 1 |
| בּוֹסְס֖וּ | Verb, Polel, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 63:18 | 1 |
| בּוֹסִ֨ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Zechariah 10:5 | 1 |
| וְ/אָב֤וּס | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Isaiah 63:6 | 1 |
| מִתְבּוֹסֶ֖סֶת | Verb, Hithpolel, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:6 | 1 |
| מִתְבּוֹסֶ֥סֶת | Verb, Hithpolel, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:22 | 1 |
| מוּבָֽס | Verb, Hophal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 14:19 | 1 |
| נָב֥וּס | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 44:5 | 1 |
| תָּב֣וּס | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 27:7 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H947, 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
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 5 — not the complete family. 2 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 11 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
