Word study

Boy

3 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נַעַר naara shaking, scatteringtranslated this way 58 times of its 227 uses · Strong’s H5288Noun  ·  Translated: boy 48, young men 30, young man 27, servant 25

    Genesis 21:12 But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to everything that Sarah tells you, for through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.

    Exodus 2:6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the little boy was crying. So she had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

    Full study and all 214 verses →
  • יֶלֶד yeledchild, son, boy, youthtranslated this way 15 times of its 88 uses · Strong’s H3206Noun  ·  Translated: child 26, children 25, young men 10, boy 7

    Genesis 21:14 Early in the morning, Abraham got up, took bread and a skin of water, put them on Hagar’s shoulders, and sent her away with the boy. She left and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba.

    Exodus 1:17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had instructed; they let the boys live.

    Full study and all 76 verses →
  • זָכָר zâkârmaletranslated this way 2 times of its 80 uses · Strong’s H2145Noun  ·  Translated: male 44, men 13, males 9, man 8

    Numbers 31:17 So now, kill all the boys, as well as every woman who has had relations with a man,

    Isaiah 66:7 “Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before she was in pain, she delivered a boy.

    Full study and all 78 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • παῖς paîsa boy or girl childtranslated this way 5 times of its 23 uses · Strong’s G3816Noun  ·  Translated: servant 12, boy 4, servants 2

    Matthew 2:16 When Herod saw that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was filled with rage. Sending orders, he put to death all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the Magi.

    Luke 2:43 When those days were over and they were returning home, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but His parents were unaware He had stayed.

    Full study and all 23 verses →
  • ἄνθρωπος ánthrōposa man, one of the human racetranslated this way 2 times of its 479 uses · Strong’s G444Noun  ·  Translated: man 290, men 127, people 14, man's 8

    John 7:22 But because Moses gave you circumcision, you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath (not that it is from Moses, but from the patriarchs.)

    John 7:23 If a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses will not be broken, why are you angry with Me for making the whole man well on the Sabbath?

    Full study and all 444 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.