Word study

Boundary

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • גְּבוּל gebûlborder, boundary, territorytranslated this way 18 times of its 209 uses · Strong’s H1366Noun  ·  Translated: border 76, territory 55, borders 15, boundary 9

    Genesis 23:17 So Ephron’s field at Machpelah near Mamre, the cave that was in it, and all the trees within the boundaries of the field were deeded over

    Numbers 34:6 Your western border will be the coastline of the Great Sea; this will be your boundary on the west.

    Full study and all 185 verses →
  • גְּבוּלָה gebûlâhborder, boundarytranslated this way 5 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H1367Noun  ·  Translated: boundaries 4

    Numbers 34:2 “Command the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the land of Canaan, it will be allotted to you as an inheritance with these boundaries:

    Deuteronomy 32:8 When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

    Full study and all 10 verses →
  • פֵּאָה pêâhcorner, sidetranslated this way 4 times of its 57 uses · Strong’s H6285Noun  ·  Translated: side 34, boundary 4, corners 3, edges 3

    Ezekiel 47:17 So the border will run from the Sea to Hazar-enan, along the northern border of Damascus, with the territory of Hamath to the north. This will be the northern boundary.

    Ezekiel 47:18 On the east side the border will run between Hauran and Damascus, along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel, to the Eastern Sea and as far as Tamar. This will be the eastern boundary.

    Full study and all 46 verses →
  • חֹק chôqsomething prescribed, a statute or duetranslated this way 3 times of its 122 uses · Strong’s H2706Noun  ·  Translated: statutes 78, statute 10, portion 7, decree 7

    Job 38:10 when I fixed its boundaries and set in place its bars and doors,

    Proverbs 8:29 when He set a boundary for the sea, so that the waters would not surpass His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth.

    Full study and all 122 verses →
  • גָּבַל gâbalbound, bordertranslated this way 2 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H1379Verb  ·  Translated: set up a boundary 1, Put a boundary around 1, set 1, border 1

    Exodus 19:12 And you are to set up a boundary for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful not to go up on the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.

    Exodus 19:23 But Moses said to the LORD, “The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, for You solemnly warned us, ‘Put a boundary around the mountain and set it apart as holy.’”

    Full study and all 5 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.