Word study

Ark

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “ark”. 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 “ark” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אָרוֹן ârônchest, arktranslated this way 186 times of its 195 uses · Strong’s H727Noun  ·  Translated: ark 183, chest 6, Thus the ark 2, coffin 1

    Exodus 25:10 And they are to construct an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.

    Leviticus 16:2 And the LORD said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter freely into the Most Holy Place behind the veil in front of the mercy seat on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat.

    Full study and all 173 verses →
  • תֵּבָה têbâharktranslated this way 26 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H8392Noun  ·  Translated: ark 26, basket 2

    Genesis 6:14 Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark and coat it with pitch inside and out.

    Genesis 6:15 And this is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high.

    Full study and all 25 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κιβωτός kibōtósan arktranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G2787Noun  ·  Translated: ark 6

    Matthew 24:38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.

    Luke 17:27 People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

    Full study and all 6 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 ark: 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.