Word study

Breach

6 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • פֶּרֶץ peretsbursting forth, breachtranslated this way 5 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s H6556Noun  ·  Translated: breach 4, Like a bursting 2, gap 2, wound 2

    Job 30:14 They advance as through a wide breach; through the ruins they keep rolling in.

    Psalm 106:23 So He said He would destroy them— had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.

    Full study and all 15 verses →
  • בָּקַע bâqacleave, break open or throughtranslated this way 4 times of its 51 uses · Strong’s H1234Verb  ·  Translated: split 7, breached 4, divided 3, burst forth 2

    2 Kings 25:4 Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,

    Jeremiah 39:2 And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year, the city was breached.

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • מַעַל maalunfaithful, treacherous acttranslated this way 2 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H4604Noun  ·  Translated: unfaithfulness 10, unfaithfully 5, committed 3, breach of faith 2

    Joshua 22:22 “The LORD, the Mighty One, is God! The LORD, the Mighty One, is God! He knows, and may Israel also know. If this was in rebellion or breach of faith against the LORD, do not spare us today.

    Joshua 22:31 Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest said to the descendants of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, “Today we know that the LORD is among us, because you have not committed this breach of faith against Him. Consequently, you have delivered the Israelites from the hand of the LORD.”

    Full study and all 22 verses →
  • מָעַל mâalact unfaithfully, treacherouslytranslated this way 1 time of its 33 uses · Strong’s H4603Verb  ·  Translated: unfaithful 13, acts 3, acted unfaithfully 2, acting unfaithfully 2

    Joshua 22:16 “This is what the whole congregation of the LORD says: ‘What is this breach of faith you have committed today against the God of Israel by turning away from the LORD and building for yourselves an altar, that you might rebel against the LORD this day?

    Full study and all 33 verses →
  • פָּרַץ pâratsbreak throughtranslated this way 1 time of its 49 uses · Strong’s H6555Verb  ·  Translated: broken 7, break 5, broke 3, spread 2

    Ecclesiastes 10:8 He who digs a pit may fall into it, and he who breaches a wall may be bitten by a snake.

    Full study and all 48 verses →
  • בְּקִיעַ beqîafissure, breachtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H1233Noun  ·  Translated: breaches 1, rubble 1

    Isaiah 22:9 You saw that there were many breaches in the walls of the City of David. You collected water from the lower pool.

    Full study and all 2 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.