Word study

Bald

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קָרַח qârachmake baldtranslated this way 3 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H7139Verb  ·  Translated: make bald 1, shave his head 1, shave their heads 1, made bald 1

    Leviticus 21:5 Priests must not make bald spots on their heads, shave off the edges of their beards, or make cuts in their bodies.

    Ezekiel 29:18 “Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon caused his army to labor strenuously against Tyre. Every head was made bald and every shoulder made raw. But he and his army received no wages from Tyre for the labor they expended on it.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • קָרַחַת qârachathbaldness of headtranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7146Noun  ·  Translated: bald head 2, back 1

    Leviticus 13:42 But if there is a reddish-white sore on the bald head or forehead, it is an infectious disease breaking out on it.

    Leviticus 13:43 The priest is to examine him, and if the swelling of the infection on his bald head or forehead is reddish-white like a skin disease,

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • קֵרֵחַ qêrêachbaldtranslated this way 1 time of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7142Adjective  ·  Translated: baldhead 2, bald 1

    Leviticus 13:40 Now if a man loses his hair and is bald, he is still clean.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • גִּבֵּחַ gibbêachhaving a bald foreheadtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H1371Noun  ·  Translated: bald on his forehead 1

    Leviticus 13:41 Or if his hairline recedes and he is bald on his forehead, he is still clean.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • קׇרְחָה qorchâhbaldness, bald spottranslated this way 1 time of its 8 uses · Strong’s H7144Noun  ·  Translated: shaved 4, baldness 1, shaven heads 1, shave their heads in mourning 1

    Micah 1:16 Shave yourselves bald and cut off your hair in mourning for your precious children; make yourselves as bald as an eagle, for they will go from you into exile.

    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.