Word study

Ambush

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: ambush, ambushes, ambushing, ambushed. 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 “ambush” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אָרַב ârablie in waittranslated this way 16 times of its 41 uses · Strong’s H693Verb  ·  Translated: ambush 9, lie in wait 9, men in ambush 4, lay in wait 4

    Joshua 8:2 And you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set up an ambush behind the city.”

    Judges 9:25 The leaders of Shechem set up an ambush against Abimelech on the hilltops, and they robbed all who passed by them on the road. So this was reported to Abimelech.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • מַאֲרָב maărâbambushtranslated this way 3 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H3993Noun  ·  Translated: ambush 2, place of ambush 1, hiding places 1, wait 1

    Joshua 8:9 So Joshua sent them out, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai. But Joshua spent that night among the people.

    2 Chronicles 13:13 Now Jeroboam had sent troops around to ambush from the rear, so that while he was in front of Judah, the ambush was behind them.

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • מִסְתָּר mistârsecret place, hiding placetranslated this way 3 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H4565Noun  ·  Translated: ambush 2, secret places 2

    Psalm 10:8 He lies in wait near the villages; in ambush he slays the innocent; his eyes watch in stealth for the helpless.

    Lamentations 3:10 He is a bear lying in wait, a lion hiding in ambush.

    Full study and all 9 verses →
  • צָפַן tsâphanhide, treasure uptranslated this way 2 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s H6845Verb  ·  Translated: hide 4, hidden 2, concealed 2, treasured 2

    Proverbs 1:11 If they say, “Come along, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without cause,

    Proverbs 1:18 But they lie in wait for their own blood; they ambush their own lives.

    Full study and all 30 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.

What the Bible says about ambush: passages by topic →

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.