Word study

Allotment

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: allotment, allotments. 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 “allotment” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • גּוֹרָל gôrâllottranslated this way 4 times of its 74 uses · Strong’s H1486Noun  ·  Translated: lot 35, lots 17, allotted 6, allotment 4

    Joshua 15:1 Now the allotment for the clans of the tribe of Judah extended to the border of Edom, to the Wilderness of Zin at the extreme southern boundary:

    Joshua 16:1 The allotment for the descendants of Joseph extended from the Jordan at Jericho to the waters of Jericho on the east, through the wilderness that goes up from Jericho into the hill country of Bethel.

    Full study and all 66 verses →
  • מַחֲלֹקֶת machălôqethdivision, coursetranslated this way 2 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H4256Noun  ·  Translated: divisions 18, division 15, according to the allotments 2, according to their divisions 2

    Joshua 11:23 So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to the allotments to their tribes. Then the land had rest from war.

    Joshua 12:7 And these are the kings of the land that Joshua and the Israelites conquered beyond the Jordan to the west, from Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon to Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir (according to the allotments to the tribes of Israel, Joshua gave them as an inheritance

    Full study and all 36 verses →
  • הָיָה hâyâhfall out, come to pass, become, betranslated this way 1 time of its 2,848 uses · Strong’s H1961Verb  ·  Translated: will be 206, become 178, came 169, was 151Full study and all 2,573 verses →
  • חֵלֶק chêleqportion, tract, territorytranslated this way 1 time of its 64 uses · Strong’s H2506Noun  ·  Translated: portion 35, share 9, portions 3, plot 3

    Job 31:2 For what is the allotment of God from above, or the heritage from the Almighty on high?

    Full study and all 61 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.