Bible word study

Baal (Strong’s H1167): Meaning in the Bible

Baal (בַּעַל) is the Hebrew word numbered H1167 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as a master; hence, a husband, or (figuratively) owner (often used with another noun in modifications of this latter sense). In the King James Bible it is translated archer, babbler, bird, captain, chief man.

• Original wordבַּעַל
• Transliterationbaʻal
• Pronunciationbah'-al
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH1167
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H1166;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Baal appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Baal (H1167) stands behind 82 English renderings in 77 verses across 19 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Judges (19), Exodus (15), Proverbs (14).

How the King James Bible renders Baal, by count

• men20 of 82 (24 percent)
• owner10 of 82 (12 percent)
• husband9 of 82 (11 percent)
• man5 of 82 (6 percent)
• owners4 of 82 (5 percent)
• hath3 of 82 (4 percent)

Three places to read Baal

• Genesis 14:13 And there came one that had escaped, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner: and these were confederate with Abram.
• Judges 9:18 And ye are risen up against my father’s house this day, and have slain his sons, threescore and ten persons, upon one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem, because he is your brother;)
• Proverbs 12:4 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Baal in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

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