Bible word study

Kopher (Strong’s H3724): Meaning in the Bible

Kopher (כֹּפֶר) is the Hebrew word numbered H3724 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as properly, a cover, i.e. (literally) a village (as covered in); (specifically) bitumen (as used for coating), and the henna plant (as used for dyeing); figuratively, a redemption-price. In the King James Bible it is translated bribe, camphire, pitch, ransom, satisfaction.

• Original wordכֹּפֶר
• Transliterationkôpher
• Pronunciationko'-fer
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH3724
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H3722;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Kopher appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Kopher (H3724) stands behind 17 English renderings in 17 verses across 10 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Proverbs (3), Exodus (2), Numbers (2).

How the King James Bible renders Kopher, by count

• ransom8 of 17 (47 percent)
• bribe2 of 17 (12 percent)
• camphire2 of 17 (12 percent)
• satisfaction2 of 17 (12 percent)
• money1 of 17 (6 percent)
• pitch1 of 17 (6 percent)

Three places to read Kopher

• Genesis 6:14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
• 1 Samuel 6:18 And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fenced cities, and of country villages, even unto the great stone of Abel, whereon they set down the ark of the LORD: which stone remaineth unto this day in the field of Joshua, the Bethshemite.
• Proverbs 13:8 The ransom of a man’s life are his riches: but the poor heareth not rebuke.

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 Kopher 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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