Word study

Busy

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “busy”. 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 “busy” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עָשָׂה âsâhdo, maketranslated this way 1 time of its 2,478 uses · Strong’s H6213Verb  ·  Translated: done 292, made 265, make 143, did 112Full study and all 2,206 verses →
  • הָמוֹן hâmônsound, murmur, roar, crowd, abundancetranslated this way 1 time of its 81 uses · Strong’s H1995Noun  ·  Translated: multitude 12, army 10, multitudes 8, many 6

    Isaiah 32:14 For the palace will be forsaken, the busy city abandoned. The hill and the watchtower will become caves forever — the delight of wild donkeys and a pasture for flocks —

    Full study and all 77 verses →
  • רוּץ rûtsruntranslated this way 1 time of its 103 uses · Strong’s H7323Verb  ·  Translated: ran 22, run 21, guards 11, couriers 6

    Haggai 1:9 You expected much, but behold, it amounted to little. And what you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the LORD of Hosts. Because My house still lies in ruins, while each of you is busy with his own house.

    Full study and all 92 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.