Bible word study

Ahav (Strong’s H157): Meaning in the Bible

Ahav (אָהַב) is the Hebrew word numbered H157 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as to have affection for (sexually or otherwise). In the King James Bible it is translated (be-) love(-d, -ly, -r), like, friend..

• Original wordאָהַב
• Transliterationʼâhab
• Pronunciationaw-hab'
• Part of speechverb (v)
• Strong’s numberH157
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. or אָהֵב ; a primitive root;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Ahav appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Ahav (H157) stands behind 208 English renderings in 195 verses across 28 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Psalms (39), Proverbs (27), Deuteronomy (22).

How the King James Bible renders Ahav, by count

• love74 of 208 (36 percent)
• loved48 of 208 (23 percent)
• loveth38 of 208 (18 percent)
• lovers17 of 208 (8 percent)
• friends8 of 208 (4 percent)
• lovest7 of 208 (3 percent)

Three places to read Ahav

• Genesis 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
• 2 Chronicles 20:7 Art not thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever?
• Proverbs 19:8 He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul: he that keepeth understanding shall find good.

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 Ahav 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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