Word study

Banish

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָדַח nâdachimpel, thrust, banishtranslated this way 18 times of its 54 uses · Strong’s H5080Verb  ·  Translated: banished 13, exiles 5, driven 4, banish 4

    Deuteronomy 30:1 “When all these things come upon you— the blessings and curses I have set before you— and you call them to mind in all the nations to which the LORD your God has banished you,

    2 Samuel 14:13 The woman asked, “Why have you devised a thing like this against the people of God? When the king says this, does he not convict himself, since he has not brought back his own banished son?

    Full study and all 53 verses →
  • גָּרַשׁ gârashdrive out, cast outtranslated this way 4 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H1644Verb  ·  Translated: drive 14, drove 7, banished 4, driven 3

    1 Kings 2:27 So Solomon banished Abiathar from the priesthood of the LORD and thus fulfilled the word that the LORD had spoken at Shiloh against the house of Eli.

    Job 30:5 They were banished from among men, shouted at like thieves,

    Full study and all 45 verses →
  • שָׁלַךְ shâlakthrow, fling, casttranslated this way 4 times of its 126 uses · Strong’s H7993Verb  ·  Translated: cast 27, threw 20, throw 16, thrown 10

    2 Kings 17:20 So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence.

    2 Chronicles 7:20 then I will uproot Israel from the soil I have given them, and I will banish from My presence this temple I have sanctified for My Name. I will make it an object of scorn and ridicule among all the peoples.

    Full study and all 121 verses →
  • שָׁלַח shâlachsendtranslated this way 2 times of its 829 uses · Strong’s H7971Verb  ·  Translated: sent 334, send 126, go 43, sending 19

    Genesis 3:23 Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

    Full study and all 783 verses →
  • אָבַד âbadperishtranslated this way 2 times of its 179 uses · Strong’s H6Verb  ·  Translated: perish 53, destroy 27, perished 15, destroyed 14

    Jeremiah 25:10 Moreover, I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp.

    Ezekiel 28:16 By the vastness of your trade, you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mountain of God, and I banished you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.

    Full study and all 173 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.