Bible word study

Kohen (Strong’s H3548): Meaning in the Bible

Kohen (כֹּהֵן) is the Hebrew word numbered H3548 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as literally one officiating, a priest; also (by courtesy) an acting priest (although a layman). In the King James Bible it is translated chief ruler, priest, prince, principal officer..

• Original wordכֹּהֵן
• Transliterationkôhên
• Pronunciationko-hane'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH3548
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. active participle of H3547;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Kohen appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Kohen (H3548) stands behind 750 English renderings in 653 verses across 29 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Leviticus (194), 2 Chronicles (89), Numbers (69).

How the King James Bible renders Kohen, by count

• priest422 of 750 (56 percent)
• priests322 of 750 (43 percent)
• own2 of 750 (0 percent)
• officer1 of 750 (0 percent)
• princes1 of 750 (0 percent)
• ruler1 of 750 (0 percent)

Three places to read Kohen

• Genesis 14:18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.
• Numbers 31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.
• 2 Chronicles 23:17 Then all the people went to the house of Baal, and brake it down, and brake his altars and his images in pieces, and slew Mattan the priest of Baal before the altars.

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 Kohen 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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