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Word study

Hebrew

To bless

בָּרַךְStrong’s H1288

barakh (ba-rakh)

Appears in 289 verses of the Old Testament

In short

To bless, and in its simplest sense to kneel. God blesses people with life and good, and people bless God by praising him: "Bless the LORD, O my soul" (Psalm 103:1).

“Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.”
Psalms 103:1 KJV
Meaning
  1. To bless, kneel(Qal) · (Niphal) to be blessed, bless oneself · (Piel) to bless · (Pual) to be blessed, be adored · (Hiphil) to cause to kneel · (Hithpael) to bless oneself
  2. (TWOT) to praise, salute, curse
How it's translated
  • blessed 63
  • and he blessed 29
  • bless 23
  • and he blessed him 9
  • and blessed 9
  • to bless 9
  • and they blessed 8
  • he will bless you 8

Word-by-word English from the STEPBible tagged text.

Where it's used most
  • Psalms 68
  • Genesis 62
  • Deuteronomy 35
  • 2 Samuel 13
  • 1 Kings 12
  • Numbers 11

24 books in all.

Related words
Explore in Scripture
All 289 verses, by book
Leviticus 2
9:229:23
2 Kings 2
4:2910:15
Ezra 1
7:27
Nehemiah 3
8:69:511:2
Ezekiel 1
3:12
Haggai 1
2:19
Zechariah 1
11:5
Hebrew dictionary

בָּרַךְ barakh · to bless

1) to bless, kneel 1a) (Qal) 1a1) to kneel 1a2) to bless 1b) (Niphal) to be blessed, bless oneself 1c) (Piel) to bless 1d) (Pual) to be blessed, be adored 1e) (Hiphil) to cause to kneel 1f) (Hithpael) to bless oneself 2) (TWOT) to praise, salute, curse Aramaic equivalent: be.rakh (בְּרַךְ "to bless" H1289)

From STEPBible’s Hebrew lexicon (based on Brown-Driver-Briggs).

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

How the English word “bless” was understood when the King James Version was still the common Bible of English readers.

BLESS, verb transitive

preterit tense and participle present tense blessed or blest.

  1. To pronounce a wish of happiness to one; to express a wish or desire of happiness.“And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him” Genesis 28:1
  2. To make happy; to make successful; to prosper in temporal concerns; as, we are blest with peace and plenty.“The Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thou doest” Deuteronomy 14:29
  3. To make happy in a future life.“BLESSed are the dead who die in the Lord” Revelation 14:13
  4. To set apart or consecrate to holy purposes; to make and pronounce holy.“And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it” Genesis 2:3
All definitions
  1. To consecrate by prayer; to invoke a blessing upon.“And Jesus took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven he blessed them” Luke 9:16
  2. To praise; to glorify, for benefits received.“BLESS the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me” Psalms 103:1
  3. To praise; to magnify; to extol, for excellencies. Psalms 104:1
  4. To esteem or account happy; with the reciprocal pronoun.“The nations shall bless themselves in him” Jeremiah 4:2
  5. To pronounce a solemn prophetical benediction upon. 7. Genesis 2:3Deuteronomy 33:11
  6. In this line of Spenser, it may signify to throw, for this is nearly the primary sense.

Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Verse references are checked against the KJV. Read the full entry.

Verses are from the King James Version. Word meanings come from the original Hebrew, not from any one translation.