Word study

Bone

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עֶצֶם etsembone, substance, selftranslated this way 90 times of its 115 uses · Strong’s H6106Noun  ·  Translated: bones 83, very 7, bone 6, blood 6

    Genesis 2:23 And the man said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man she was taken.”

    Exodus 12:46 It must be eaten inside one house. You are not to take any of the meat outside the house, and you may not break any of the bones.

    Full study and all 101 verses →
  • גֶּרֶם gerembone, strength, selftranslated this way 2 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H1634Noun  ·  Translated: strong 1, bare 1, limbs 1, bones 1

    Proverbs 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.

    Proverbs 25:15 Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.

    Full study and all 5 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ὀστέον ostéona bonetranslated this way 4 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G3747Noun  ·  Translated: bones 4

    Matthew 23:27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.

    Luke 24:39 Look at My hands and My feet. It is I Myself. Touch Me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

    Full study and all 4 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.