← Back to Joshua 24

STRONG'S HEBREW DICTIONARY

H5647

עָבַד
You came here from“serve”

Strong numbering source: James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890).

Original wordעָבַד
Transliterationʻâbad
Pronunciation guideaw-bad'

QUICK LEXICAL ENTRY

Definition

a primitive root; to work (in any sense); by implication, to serve, till, (causatively) enslave, etc.; [idiom] be, keep in bondage, be bondmen, bond-service, compel, do, dress, ear, execute, [phrase] husbandman, keep, labour(-ing man, bring to pass, (cause to, make to) serve(-ing, self), (be, become) servant(-s), do (use) service, till(-er), transgress (from margin), (set a) work, be wrought, worshipper,

BROWN–DRIVER–BRIGGS

Historical Hebrew lexicon

BDB supplies fuller lexical senses, grammatical notes, cognate material, and historical citations. A listed sense is not automatically the meaning of this word in every verse; context and grammar determine usage.

Help with BDB terminology

BDB was written for readers comfortable with Hebrew grammar. These notes explain technical terms found in this entry without changing the BDB text.

Qal: the most basic Hebrew verbal stem (binyan), often expressing a simple active action, though individual verbs must be interpreted in context.

עָבַד 290 vb. work, serve
Qal
labour, work, do work
work for another, serve him by labour
serve as subjects
serve God
serve י׳ with Levitical service
Niph.
be tilled, of land
dub. cultivated field
Pu. worked
Hiph.
compel to labour as slaves
make to serve as subjects
cause to serve God
Hoph. be led or enticed to serve

Source: Brown–Driver–Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Digital text and Strong-to-BDB mapping supplied by the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project (CC BY 4.0); underlying BDB text is public domain.

LEXICAL FAMILY

Root & related forms

These relationships are taken from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon lexical index. They are historical/lexical relationships encoded in that source; they do not mean that related words share the same sense in every context.

Indexed rootעָבַדʿābadwork

Relationship source: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, LexicalIndex.xml (CC BY 4.0).

CONCORDANCE

Where this word appears

292 verified lexical occurrences in the reviewed Old Testament alignment. Search or filter the concordance below.

Browse only locations where this word occurs: choose a book, then a chapter, then a verse. Or type a reference directly.

Source note

Strong numbering: James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890).

BDB: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Digital text and Strong-to-BDB mapping: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project. Open Scriptures data files are CC BY 4.0; the underlying BDB text is public domain.

Lexical relationships: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project LexicalIndex.xml (CC BY 4.0). Root/derivative relationships are displayed only when explicitly encoded in that source; The Bible Directory does not infer etymology from spelling.

Method: KJV wording is displayed as the site translation. Public Hebrew links use the reviewed CrossWire KJV source-span alignment; Hebrew surface forms and morphology come from STEP Bible TAHOT. Translation alignment, lexical identity, and morphology are stored as separate data layers. Ambiguous alignments remain plain text rather than being guessed.