Intercession , supplication ; by implication, a hymn
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תְּפִלָּה (tepillah) is a Hebrew noun for prayer, intercession, or supplication. It appears in psalm titles, personal cries, communal petitions, temple dedication, confession, lament, prophetic instruction, wisdom evaluation, and prayers spoken amid illness, invasion, exile, guilt, or danger.
Reader summary
Full entry for תְּפִלָּה (H8605) · Open the biblical lexicon
תְּפִלָּה (tepillah) is a Hebrew noun for prayer, intercession, or supplication. It appears in psalm titles, personal cries, communal petitions, temple dedication, confession, lament, prophetic instruction, wisdom evaluation, and prayers spoken amid illness, invasion, exile, guilt, or danger.
The BSB source-word alignment has 77 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include my prayer (13), a prayer (7), the prayer (7), prayer (5), their prayer (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 2 Samuel 7:27. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (32), 2 Chronicles (12), 1 Kings (8), Isaiah (5).
תְּפִלָּה (tepillah) is a Hebrew noun for prayer, intercession, or supplication. It appears in psalm titles, personal cries, communal petitions, temple dedication, confession, lament, prophetic instruction, wisdom evaluation, and prayers spoken amid illness, invasion, exile, guilt, or danger. It names an address or appeal to God without prescribing one posture, length, location, structure, emotional tone, or outcome.
Psalm 65 praises God as hearer of prayer; Psalm 88 prays from darkness; Psalm 102 anticipates attention to the destitute; Daniel confesses and intercedes; Solomon asks God to hear people facing varied crises; Isaiah envisions a house of prayer for all peoples. Other texts complicate easy formulas: Isaiah 1 rejects multiplied prayers from hands associated with bloodshed, Lamentations describes prayer blocked, Psalm 80 asks how long God remains angry with prayer, and Proverbs calls prayer detestable when instruction is refused.
Prayer is not a transaction, diagnostic test, or substitute for responsible action. Unanswered prayer does not prove deficient faith, secret sin, demonic interference, or divine rejection. Prayer must not delay emergency response, medicine, safeguarding, legal reporting, financial accountability, or practical care. Public prayer requires discretion and consent when naming private needs or touching someone. Compulsive prayer, terror about saying words perfectly, or voices issuing dangerous commands may require compassionate pastoral support together with qualified clinical care.
H8605 covers personal and communal petition, intercession, lament, confession, composed prayer, temple prayer, imprecation, prophetic limits, and wisdom judgments about ethically disordered prayer.
The Lord refuses multiplied prayer when hands are full of blood, joining worship to repentance and justice rather than verbal quantity.
Foreigners are welcomed into joy and accepted worship in a house called a house of prayer for all peoples.
Jeremiah is told not to intercede for the people within a specific temple-sermon judgment oracle, not given a universal ban on praying for offenders.
The lamenter cries for help yet experiences prayer as shut out, giving canonical language for felt divine nonresponse.
Daniel turns to God through prayer, pleas, fasting, sackcloth, and ashes before confessing communal sin and asking for mercy.
God is addressed as hearer of prayer, to whom all flesh comes, grounding hope without promising every requested outcome.
A prayer from sustained darkness asks that the cry come before God, with no narrated resolution before the psalm ends.
An imprecatory petition asks that an opponent's prayer be counted as sin, severe advocacy language that belongs to lament and divine adjudication rather than private retaliation.
The psalmist asks that prayer be established like incense and raised hands like the evening offering, using cultic comparison without abolishing sacrifice.
Prayer is called detestable when a person turns away from hearing instruction, confronting devotion that resists ethical formation.
Solomon asks God to hear each prayer and plea when people recognize their affliction and spread their hands toward the temple.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Prayer as earnest entreaty directed toward God, encompassing both petition and intercession
Prayer as earnest entreaty directed toward God, encompassing both petition and intercession
intercession, supplication; by implication, a hymn BDB: prayer Usage: prayer.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 77 lexical occurrence verses.
תְּפִלָּה is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H8605 gives teachers a prayer vocabulary large enough for both confidence and nonresolution. Psalm 65 names God as hearer; Psalm 88 ends in darkness; Lamentations describes blocked prayer; Isaiah 1 rejects abundant prayer beside bloodshed; Proverbs critiques prayer separated from instruction; Daniel and Nehemiah join intercession to confession and action. This range protects people from formulas about posture, eloquence, fasting, location, intensity, or repetition.
Psalm 141 compares prayer to incense but does not establish historical replacement of sacrifice. The noun's relation to H6419 does not prove that prayer means judging oneself. Prayer can accompany medicine, therapy, emergency intervention, legal action, reporting, restitution, and planning. It should never be used to pressure a victim into contact, disclose private information publicly, touch without consent, or keep danger inside a congregation.
When prayer becomes compulsive, panic-driven, or tied to intrusive fears, pastoral care should avoid reassurance cycles and support appropriate clinical help.
Ps.65.2
H8605 is a noun related to the verb H6419 and can name prayer as speech, petition, intercession, composition, or occasion. Etymology cannot make every occurrence self-judgment. Psalm titles and narrative formulas help identify literary settings, while context supplies the prayer's content and evaluation.
New Testament prayer, intercession, petition, thanksgiving, lament, and worship use several Greek terms. Jesus' citation of Isaiah 56 and New Testament incense imagery can extend canonical themes, but those passages do not make H8605 a technique, sacramental substitute, or guarantee of outcomes.