בָּזַז
to plunder
‘to plunder’ is one of 4 main senses 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”). Here: ‘spoil’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us 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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
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.
Every verse where H962 appears in the Book of Joshua — 3 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.
Joshua
- Joshua 8:2 תָּבֹ֣זּוּ Qal impf 2mp You shall do to Ai and her king as you did to Jericho and her king: only the spoil of it, and the cattle of it, shall you take for a prey to yourselves: set you an ambush for the city behind it.
- Joshua 8:27 בָּזְז֥וּ Qal pf 3cp Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for prey to themselves, according to the word of Yahweh which he commanded Joshua.
- Joshua 11:14 בָּזְז֥וּ Qal pf 3cp All the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey to themselves; but every man they struck with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any who breathed.
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.
“to plunder” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb בזז (bâzaz). Older and newer Bibles part ways — “take” in the King James Version, “plunder” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 39 verses across 15 books, a moderately common footprint. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 34:27. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H962 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 →
- 39
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 39 distinct verses.
- 15 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 15 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #837
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 837 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 39 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Isaiah 8 verses 21%
- Ezekiel 5 verses 13%
- 2 Chronicles 4 verses 10%
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 39 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 24 verses · 62%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 8 verses · 21%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 18%
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: Take 5×, Spoiled 4×, Prey 2×
- American Standard Version: Take 4×, Prey 3×, Took 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Plunder 8×, Plundered 3×, They plundered 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Plunder 9×, Plundered 7×, They plundered 5×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H962 across 43 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 20 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 H962 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 30 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 H962 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 26 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 H962 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 21 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 Pual (the passive of Piel).
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 3 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
- spoil
Niphal
- . be spoiled, plundered
Pual
- . be taken as spoil
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
בָּזַז vb. spoil, plunder
— 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.
בָּזַז
- √בז to divide, to distribute, to make spoil. Y. Macc. II, 31ᵈ bot. היה בוֹזֵז made booty.—Part. pass. בָּזוּז, f. בְּזוּזָה robbed, illegitimately conquered. Gen. R. s. 1 ב׳ היא בידכם it is robbery what ye possess (ye have no title).
בְּזַז I
- ch. (בַּז) same. Targ. Hos. VII, 9; X, 2; a. fr.—Esth. R. to I, 10, v. בּוּז. Cant. R. to VII, 7 (prov.) take presents from an heir ולא מן דבַזִּין ליה but not from one for whom they make spoil (king).
- same. *Num. R. s. 12 דהוא בזיז וכ׳ he robs (the youths of) the noon-day lessons (transl. ישוד Ps. XCI, 6); v. גְּזַז e.g. Psalms 91:6
- to cause to be plundered. Targ. Is. XXIV, 1 מַבֵּיז (Var. מֵבִיז).
- to be robbed. Ib. 3; a. e.—Ib. 16 מִתְבַּזִּין = מתבזזין.
*בְּזַז II
- to be shy, v. כְּזַז.
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 37 distinct written forms H962 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H962, 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 37 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 39 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
- Genesis 34:27
- Numbers 31:9
- Deuteronomy 2:35
- Joshua 8:2
- 1 Samuel 14:36
- 2 Kings 7:16
- 2 Chronicles 14:14
- Esther 3:13
- Isaiah 10:2
- Jeremiah 20:5
- Ezekiel 26:12
- Amos 3:11
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.
