Bible word study

Ahavah (Strong’s H160): Meaning in the Bible

Ahavah (אַהֲבָה) is the Hebrew word numbered H160 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. In the King James Bible it is translated love..

• Original wordאַהֲבָה
• Transliterationʼahăbâh
• Pronunciationa-hab-aw
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH160
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Strong’s lists Ahavah (אַהֲבָה) chiefly by its usage below rather than by a separate definition.

Derivation. feminine of H158 and meaning the same

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Ahavah appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Ahavah (H160) stands behind 40 English renderings in 37 verses across 15 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Song of Solomon (11), Proverbs (5), 1 Samuel (3).

How the King James Bible renders Ahavah, by count

• love32 of 40 (80 percent)
• loved7 of 40 (18 percent)
• had1 of 40 (2 percent)

Three places to read Ahavah

• Genesis 29:20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
• Proverbs 10:12 Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.
• Song of Solomon 7:6 How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!

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 Ahavah 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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