Word study

Baby

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָלַד yâladbear, bring forth, begettranslated this way 3 times of its 484 uses · Strong’s H3205Verb  ·  Translated: father 111, born 57, bore 52, gave birth 44

    1 Kings 3:18 On the third day after I gave birth, this woman also had a baby. We were alone, with no one in the house but the two of us.

    1 Kings 3:26 Then the woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she yearned with compassion for her son. “Please, my lord,” she said, “give her the living baby. Do not kill him!” But the other woman said, “He will be neither mine nor yours. Cut him in two!”

    Full study and all 395 verses →
  • שָׁבַר shâbarbreak, break in piecestranslated this way 1 time of its 146 uses · Strong’s H7665Verb  ·  Translated: broken 32, shattered 23, break 21, broke 10

    Isaiah 66:9 Shall I bring a baby to the point of birth and not deliver it?” says the LORD. “Or will I who deliver close the womb?” says your God.

    Full study and all 142 verses →
  • עַתִּיק attîqremoved, oldtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H6267Adjective  ·  Translated: names are from ancient 1, babies removed 1

    Isaiah 28:9 Whom is He trying to teach? To whom is He explaining His message? To infants just weaned from milk? To babies removed from the breast?

    Full study and all 2 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • βρέφος bréphosinfant, babetranslated this way 6 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s G1025Noun  ·  Translated: baby 4, babies 2, infants 1, infancy 1

    Luke 1:41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

    1 Peter 2:2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,

    Full study and all 8 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.