Word study

Bearer

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מָשַׁךְ mâshakdraw, dragtranslated this way 1 time of its 34 uses · Strong’s H4900Verb  ·  Translated: draw 3, drew 2, tall 2, Extend 2

    Judges 5:14 Some came from Ephraim, with their roots in Amalek; Benjamin came with your people after you. The commanders came down from Machir, the bearers of the marshal’s staff from Zebulun.

    Full study and all 34 verses →
  • נָשָׂא nâsâlift, take, carrytranslated this way 1 time of its 642 uses · Strong’s H5375Verb  ·  Translated: bear 49, lift 45, lifted 41, carried 38

    Judges 9:54 He quickly called his armor-bearer, saying, “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, ‘A woman killed him.’” So Abimelech’s armor-bearer ran his sword through him, and he died.

    1 Samuel 14:7 His armor-bearer replied, “Do all that is in your heart. Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.”

    Full study and all 601 verses →
  • בָּשַׂר bâsarbear tidingstranslated this way 1 time of its 23 uses · Strong’s H1319Verb  ·  Translated: proclaim 4, herald of good news 3, proclaim the news 2, brings good news 2

    2 Samuel 4:10 when someone told me, ‘Look, Saul is dead,’ and thought he was a bearer of good news, I seized him and put him to death at Ziklag. That was his reward for his news!

    Full study and all 21 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.