בָּחִיר
chosen
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
- Adjective
- A word that describes or qualifies a noun.
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct 6 times (46%)
- Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct 6 times (46%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 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 13 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H972 appears — 13 distinct verses across 4 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.
2 Samuel 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 5 verses
- Psalms 89:3 לִ/בְחִירִ֑/י prep + Adjective Adjective ms cs + sfx pers 1cs "I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David, my servant,
- Psalms 105:6 בְּחִירָֽי/ו adj Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 3ms You seed of Abraham, his servant, You children of Jacob, his chosen ones.
- Psalms 105:43 בְּחִירָֽי/ו adj Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 3ms He brought forth his people with joy, His chosen with singing.
- Psalms 106:5 בְּחִירֶ֗י/ךָ adj Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 2ms That I may see the prosperity of your chosen, That I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, That I may glory with your inheritance.
- Psalms 106:23 בְחִיר֗/וֹ adj Adjective ms cs + sfx pers 3ms Therefore he said that he would destroy them, Had Moses, his chosen, not stood before him in the breach, To turn away his wrath, so that he wouldn't destroy them.
Isaiah 6 verses
- Isaiah 42:1 בְּחִירִ֖/י adj Adjective ms cs + sfx pers 1cs Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my Spirit on him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.
- Isaiah 43:20 בְחִירִֽ/י adj Adjective ms cs + sfx pers 1cs The animals of the field shall honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen,
- Isaiah 45:4 בְּחִירִ֑/י adj Adjective ms cs + sfx pers 1cs For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called you by your name: I have surnamed you, though you have not known me.
- Isaiah 65:9 בְחִירַ֔/י adj Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 1cs I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains; and my chosen shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there.
- Isaiah 65:15 לִ/בְחִירַ֔/י prep + Adjective Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 1cs You shall leave your name for a curse to my chosen; and the Lord Yahweh will kill you; and he will call his servants by another name:
- Isaiah 65:22 בְחִירָֽ/י adj Adjective mp cs + sfx pers 1cs They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
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.
בחיר (bâchîyr) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “chosen.” The King James Version usually renders it “chosen,” while modern versions prefer “chosen ones” (Berean Standard Bible) — see the renderings breakdown. With 13 verses in 4 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Isaiah, which alone accounts for 46% of its uses. Debuting at 2 Samuel 21:6, it then recurs through the corpus. 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 H972 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 →
- 13
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 13 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 13 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 13 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 54%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 46%
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: Chosen 7×, Elect 4×
- American Standard Version: Chosen 10×, Chosen ones 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Chosen ones 5×, Chosen one 4×, Chosen 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Chosen 6×, Chosen ones 5×, Chosen one 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H972 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H972 across 13 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H972 across 13 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H972 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- chosen, choice one, chosen one, elect (of God)
Word origin
n.m. chosen, cstr. בְּחִיר 2 S 21:6 (but We Dr בְּהַר י׳); sf. בְּחִירָיו 1 Ch 16:13 ψ 105:6; 89:4; 105:43; 106:5, 23 Is 42:1; 43:20; 45:4; 65:9, 15, 22 always the chosen or elect of Yahweh.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from בחר (bâchar) (H977) — to choose.
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.
בְּחִיר
- (בחר)
- 1. = h. בָּחוּר, בָּחִיר, chosen, select. Targ. II Sam. XXI, 6; a. e.—Pl. בְּחִירִין. Targ. Ps. CV, 6; a. e.—Y. Snh. VI, 23ᶜ bot. תמנין גוברין ב׳ eighty select (young) men; Y. Ḥag. II, 78ᵃ top בחו׳ (corr. acc.).—Fem. בְּחִירָן. Targ. O. Ex. XIV, 7.
- 2. (cmp. בָּחַן) tried, purified. Targ. Ps. XVIII, 31; II Sam. XXIII, 31. e.g. 2 Samuel 23:31
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 H972 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּחִירָֽי/ו | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 105:6 | 3 |
| בְחִיר֗/וֹ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 106:23 | 1 |
| בְחִירִֽ/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 43:20 | 1 |
| בְחִירַ֔/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 65:9 | 1 |
| בְחִירָֽ/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 65:22 | 1 |
| בְּחִ֣יר | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | 2 Samuel 21:6 | 1 |
| בְּחִירִ֑/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 45:4 | 1 |
| בְּחִירִ֖/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Isaiah 42:1 | 1 |
| בְּחִירֶ֗י/ךָ | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 106:5 | 1 |
| לִ/בְחִירִ֑/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 89:3 | 1 |
| לִ/בְחִירַ֔/י | Adjective, Adjective, Masculine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 65:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H972, 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
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 6 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 13 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.
