Word study

Asleep

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָשֵׁן yâshênsleeptranslated this way 5 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s H3462Verb  ·  Translated: sleep 7, fall asleep 2

    Genesis 41:5 but he fell back asleep and dreamed a second time: Seven heads of grain, plump and ripe, came up on one stalk.

    1 Kings 19:5 Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.”

    Full study and all 19 verses →
  • יָשֵׁן yâshênsleepingtranslated this way 3 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H3463Adjective  ·  Translated: sleep 3, asleep 2, remained asleep 1, sleeping 1

    1 Samuel 26:7 That night David and Abishai came to the troops, and Saul was lying there asleep in the inner circle of the camp, with his spear stuck in the ground by his head. And Abner and the troops were lying around him.

    1 Kings 3:20 So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I was asleep. She laid him in her bosom and put her dead son at my bosom.

    Full study and all 9 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κοιμάω koimáōI fall asleep, am asleeptranslated this way 13 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s G2837Verb  ·  Translated: fallen asleep 8, fell asleep 3, asleep 2, sleeping 2

    Matthew 27:52 The tombs broke open, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

    Luke 22:45 When Jesus rose from prayer and returned to the disciples, He found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • καθεύδω katheúdōI sleep, am sleepingtranslated this way 7 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s G2518Verb  ·  Translated: sleeping 8, asleep 6, sleep 3, still sleeping 2

    Matthew 9:24 “Go away,” He told them. “The girl is not dead, but asleep.” And they laughed at Him.

    Mark 5:39 He went inside and asked, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.”

    Full study and all 20 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.