Word study
Acquire
7 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: acquired, acquire, acquires, acquiring. 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 “acquire” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- קָנָה qânâhget, acquiretranslated this way 13 times of its 82 uses · Strong’s H7069Verb · Translated: buy 16, bought 13, purchased 7, acquire 6Full study and all 75 verses →
Genesis 47:20 So Joseph acquired for Pharaoh all the land in Egypt; the Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields because the famine was so severe upon them. The land became Pharaoh’s,
Ruth 4:5 Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi and also from Ruth the Moabitess, you must also acquire the widow of the deceased in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance.”
- עָשָׂה âsâhdo, maketranslated this way 4 times of its 2,478 uses · Strong’s H6213Verb · Translated: done 292, made 265, make 143, did 112Full study and all 2,206 verses →
Genesis 12:5 And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions and people they had acquired in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,
- רָכַשׁ râkashcollect, gathertranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7408Verb · Translated: acquired 3Full study and all 3 verses →
Genesis 31:18 and he drove all his livestock before him, along with all the possessions he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to his father Isaac in the land in Canaan.
Genesis 36:6 Later, Esau took his wives and sons and daughters and all the people of his household, along with his livestock, all his other animals, and all the property he had acquired in Canaan, and he moved to a land far away from his brother Jacob.
- לָקַח lâqachtaketranslated this way 3 times of its 938 uses · Strong’s H3947Verb · Translated: take 247, took 245, taken 40, get 26Full study and all 890 verses →
Genesis 38:6 Now Judah acquired a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar.
- אָחַז âchazgrasp, take hold, take possessiontranslated this way 3 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H270Verb · Translated: seized 9, seize 4, grip 3, took hold 3Full study and all 61 verses →
Genesis 34:10 You may settle among us, and the land will be open to you. Live here, move about freely, and acquire your own property.”
Joshua 22:9 So the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh left the Israelites at Shiloh in the land of Canaan to return to their own land of Gilead, which they had acquired according to the command of the LORD through Moses.
- מָצָא mâtsâattain to, findtranslated this way 2 times of its 436 uses · Strong’s H4672Verb · Translated: found 197, find 87, finds 13, present 7Full study and all 411 verses →
Leviticus 25:26 Or if a man has no one to redeem it for him, but he prospers and acquires enough to redeem his land,
Numbers 31:50 So we have brought to the LORD an offering of the gold articles each man acquired— armlets, bracelets, rings, earrings, and necklaces— to make atonement for ourselves before the LORD.”
- רָבָה râbâhbe, or become, much, many, greattranslated this way 2 times of its 219 uses · Strong’s H7235Verb · Translated: multiply 39, multiplied 23, many 15, much 10Full study and all 207 verses →
Deuteronomy 17:16 But the king must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire more horses, for the LORD has said, ‘You are never to go back that way again.’
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.