אֵזוֹב
e.zov
hyssop
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Hyssop (H0231): A Biblical Plant The Hebrew word *ezov* refers to hyssop, a plant that appears ten times throughout the biblical text. Based solely on its frequency and consistent translation across these instances, hyssop was a plant of sufficient importance to the ancient Israelites to warrant multiple mentions in scripture. The uniform rendering as "hyssop" across all ten occurrences suggests a well-established plant with a recognizable identity in the biblical world. The relatively modest number of occurrences—ten across the entire Hebrew Bible—indicates that while hyssop held significance, it was not a dominant or frequently referenced element in biblical narrative or law. This pattern suggests the plant had specialized rather than everyday uses, appearing in particular contexts important enough to record but not so common as to generate extensive discussion. Without access to the specific passages where *ezov* appears, the data alone indicates this was a plant deemed worthy of biblical documentation, though the nature and extent of its practical or religious significance cannot be determined from the lexical entry provided.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
10 total occurrences across the text
Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Exodus 12:22You shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two door posts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
Leviticus 14:4then the priest shall command them to take for him who is to be cleansed two living clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop.
Leviticus 14:6As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood, the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water.
Leviticus 14:49To cleanse the house he shall take two birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop.
Leviticus 14:51He shall take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet, and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the slain bird, and in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times.
Leviticus 14:52He shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, with the living bird, with the cedar wood, with the hyssop, and with the scarlet;
Numbers 19:6The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer.
Numbers 19:18A clean person shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave.
1 Kings 4:33He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he also spoke of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish.