Word study

Accuse

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: accuse, accused, accusing, accuses. 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 “accuse” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שׂוּם sûmput, place, settranslated this way 3 times of its 560 uses · Strong’s H7760Verb  ·  Translated: put 84, set 71, make 45, made 39

    Deuteronomy 22:14 and he then accuses her of shameful conduct and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman and had relations with her, but I discovered she was not a virgin.”

    1 Samuel 22:15 Was that day the first time I inquired of God for him? Far be it from me! Let not the king accuse your servant or any of my father’s household, for your servant knew nothing of this whole affair — not in part or in whole.”

    Full study and all 533 verses →
  • רִיב rîbstrive, contendtranslated this way 3 times of its 64 uses · Strong’s H7378Verb  ·  Translated: contend 13, quarreled 4, plead 4, rebuked 4

    Psalm 103:9 He will not always accuse us, nor harbor His anger forever.

    Proverbs 3:30 Do not accuse a man without cause, when he has done you no harm.

    Full study and all 58 verses →
  • שָׂטַן sâṭanbe or act as adversarytranslated this way 2 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H7853Verb  ·  Translated: accusers 3, accuse 2, attack 1

    Psalm 109:4 In return for my love they accuse me, but I am a man of prayer.

    Zechariah 3:1 Then the angel showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, with Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

    Full study and all 6 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κατηγορέω katēgoréōI accuse, charge, prosecutetranslated this way 13 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s G2723Verb  ·  Translated: accuse 6, accusing 3, charges 3, accused 2

    Matthew 12:10 and a man with a withered hand was there. In order to accuse Jesus, they asked Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

    Mark 3:2 In order to accuse Jesus, they were watching to see if He would heal on the Sabbath.

    Full study and all 21 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.