Word study
Bar
4 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: bars, bar, bared, barred. 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 “bar” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- בְּרִיחַ berîachbartranslated this way 22 times of its 36 uses · Strong’s H1280Noun · Translated: bars 18, crossbars 11, crossbar 2Full study and all 34 verses →
Deuteronomy 3:5 All these cities were fortified with high walls and gates and bars, and there were many more unwalled villages.
Judges 16:3 But Samson lay there only until midnight, when he got up, took hold of the doors of the city gate and both gateposts, and pulled them out, bar and all. Then he put them on his shoulders and took them to the top of the mountain overlooking Hebron.
- חָשַׂף châsaphstrip off, strip, make baretranslated this way 3 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H2834Verb · Translated: bared 3, bare 2Full study and all 10 verses →
Isaiah 20:4 so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old alike, naked and barefoot, with bared buttocks— to Egypt’s shame.
Ezekiel 4:7 You must turn your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared, and prophesy against it.
- מוֹטָה môṭâhpole, bar (of yoke)translated this way 2 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s H4133Noun · Translated: yoke 9, bars 2, poles 1Full study and all 10 verses →
Leviticus 26:13 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk in uprightness.
Ezekiel 34:27 The trees of the field will give their fruit, and the land will yield its produce; My flock will be secure in their land. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bars of their yoke and delivered them from the hands that enslaved them.
- לָשׁוֹן lâshôntonguetranslated this way 2 times of its 112 uses · Strong’s H3956Noun · Translated: tongue 61, tongues 23, language 11, bay 3Full study and all 111 verses →
Joshua 7:21 When I saw among the spoils a beautiful cloak from Shinar, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”
Joshua 7:24 Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the cloak, the bar of gold, his sons and daughters, his oxen and donkeys and sheep, his tent, and everything else he owned, and brought them to the Valley of Achor.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.