Word study

Accordingly

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “accordingly”. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “accordingly” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • כֵּן kênright, veritable, honesttranslated this way 2 times of its 461 uses · Strong’s H3651Adverb  ·  Translated: Therefore 159, so 111, this 24, way 13

    1 Kings 20:25 And you must raise an army like the one you have lost— horse for horse and chariot for chariot— so we can fight the Israelites on the plain, where we will surely prevail.” And the king approved their plan and acted accordingly.

    Esther 2:4 Then let the young woman who pleases the king become queen in place of Vashti.” This suggestion pleased the king, and he acted accordingly.

    Full study and all 451 verses →
  • עַל alheighttranslated this way 1 time of its 4,859 uses · Strong’s H5921Preposition  ·  Translated: on 777, over 297, in 218, against 216

    Genesis 43:7 They replied, “The man questioned us in detail about ourselves and our family: ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ And we answered him accordingly. How could we possibly know that he would say, ‘Bring your brother here’?”

    Full study and all 3,996 verses →
  • אִישׁ îshmantranslated this way 1 time of its 1,399 uses · Strong’s H376Noun  ·  Translated: man 650, men 198, one 79, each 79

    Exodus 12:4 If the household is too small for a whole lamb, they are to share with the nearest neighbor based on the number of people, and apportion the lamb accordingly.

    Full study and all 1,278 verses →
  • חָלַק châlaqdivide, sharetranslated this way 1 time of its 65 uses · Strong’s H2505Verb  ·  Translated: divided 14, divide 9, distributed 4, dividing 3

    1 Chronicles 24:4 Since more leaders were found among Eleazar’s descendants than those of Ithamar, they were divided accordingly. There were sixteen heads of families from the descendants of Eleazar and eight from the descendants of Ithamar.

    Full study and all 64 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.