Bible word study

Tsaba (Strong’s H6635): Meaning in the Bible

Tsaba (צָבָא) is the Hebrew word numbered H6635 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as a mass of persons (or figuratively, things), especially reg. organized for war (an army); by implication, a campaign, literally or figuratively (specifically, hardship, worship). In the King James Bible it is translated appointed time, ( ) army, ( ) battle, company, host.

• Original wordצָבָא
• Transliterationtsâbâʼ
• Pronunciationtsaw-baw'
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH6635
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. or (feminine) צְבָאָה; from H6633;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Tsaba appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Tsaba (H6635) stands behind 483 English renderings in 461 verses across 27 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Jeremiah (88), Numbers (75), Isaiah (70).

How the King James Bible renders Tsaba, by count

• hosts291 of 483 (60 percent)
• host98 of 483 (20 percent)
• war41 of 483 (8 percent)
• armies22 of 483 (5 percent)
• army7 of 483 (1 percent)
• battle5 of 483 (1 percent)

Three places to read Tsaba

• Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
• 1 Chronicles 12:37 And on the other side of Jordan, of the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and of the half tribe of Manasseh, with all manner of instruments of war for the battle, an hundred and twenty thousand.
• Jeremiah 28:14 For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; I have put a yoke of iron upon the neck of all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; and they shall serve him: and I have given him the beasts of the field also.

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 Tsaba 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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