Word study
Belly
6 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: belly, bellies. 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 “belly” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- בֶּטֶן beṭenbelly, body, wombtranslated this way 11 times of its 64 uses · Strong’s H990Noun · Translated: womb 36, belly 8, stomach 3, within 3Full study and all 64 verses →
Numbers 5:21 and the priest shall have the woman swear under the oath of the curse— ‘then may the LORD make you an attested curse among your people by making your thigh shrivel and your belly swell.
Judges 3:21 And Ehud reached with his left hand, pulled the sword from his right thigh, and plunged it into Eglon’s belly.
- גָּחוֹן gâchônbellytranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H1512Noun · Translated: belly 2Full study and all 2 verses →
Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you will eat, all the days of your life.
Leviticus 11:42 Do not eat any creature that moves along the ground, whether it crawls on its belly or walks on four or more feet; for such creatures are detestable.
- קֹבָה qôbâhstomach, bellytranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H6897Noun · Translated: belly 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Numbers 25:8 followed the Israelite into the tent, and drove the spear through both of them— through the Israelite and on through the belly of the woman. So the plague against the Israelites was halted,
- כְּרֵשׂ kerêsbellytranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H3770Noun · Translated: belly 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Jeremiah 51:34 “Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has devoured me; he has crushed me. He has set me aside like an empty vessel; he has swallowed me like a monster; he filled his belly with my delicacies and vomited me out.
- מְעָה meâhbowelstranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H4577Noun · Translated: belly 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Daniel 2:32 The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze,
- מֵעֶה mêehinternal organs, inward parts (intestines, bowels), bellytranslated this way 1 time of its 30 uses · Strong’s H4578Noun · Translated: body 4, within 4, heart 4, stomach 3Full study and all 28 verses →
Jonah 1:17 Now the LORD had appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish.
Greek words (New Testament)
- κοιλία koilíabelly, womb, the inner mantranslated this way 3 times of its 20 uses · Strong’s G2836Noun · Translated: womb 7, stomach 6, belly 3, birth 2Full study and all 19 verses →
Matthew 12:40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Luke 15:16 He longed to fill his belly with the pods the pigs were eating, but no one would give him a thing .
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.
What the Bible says about belly: passages by topic →
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.