Word study
Cake
7 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: cakes, cake. 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 “cake” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- חַלָּה challâha kind of caketranslated this way 11 times of its 14 uses · Strong’s H2471Noun · Translated: cakes 6, cake 5, loaf 2, loaves 1Full study and all 11 verses →
Exodus 29:2 along with unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers anointed with oil. Make them out of fine wheat flour,
Leviticus 2:4 Now if you bring an offering of grain baked in an oven, it must consist of fine flour, either unleavened cakes mixed with oil or unleavened wafers coated with oil.
- עֻגָּה uggâhdisc or cake of breadtranslated this way 5 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H5692Noun · Translated: cake of bread 2, cake 2, bread 1, loaves 1Full study and all 7 verses →
Numbers 11:8 The people walked around and gathered it, ground it on a handmill or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot or shaped it into cakes. It tasted like pastry baked with fine oil.
1 Kings 17:13 “Do not be afraid,” Elijah said to her. “Go and do as you have said. But first make me a small cake of bread from what you have, and bring it out to me. Afterward, make some for yourself and your son,
- אֲשִׁישָׁה ăshîshâhraisin-caketranslated this way 4 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H809Noun · Translated: raisin cake 2, raisin cakes 2, raisins 1Full study and all 5 verses →
2 Samuel 6:19 Then he distributed to every man and woman among the multitude of Israel a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake. And all the people departed, each to his own home.
1 Chronicles 16:3 Then he distributed to every man and woman of Israel a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake.
- דְּבֵלָה debêlâhlump of pressed figs, pressed (fig-) caketranslated this way 3 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H1690Noun · Translated: cakes of figs 1, fig cake 1, poultice 1, fig cakes 1Full study and all 5 verses →
1 Samuel 25:18 Then Abigail hurried and took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five butchered sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs. She loaded them on donkeys
1 Chronicles 12:40 And their neighbors from as far away as Issachar, Zebulun, and Naphtali came bringing food on donkeys, camels, mules, and oxen— abundant supplies of flour, fig cakes and raisin cakes, wine and oil, oxen and sheep. Indeed, there was joy in Israel.
- לָבִיבָה lâbîbâhcakestranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H3834Noun · Translated: cakes 2, them 1Full study and all 3 verses →
2 Samuel 13:6 So Amnon lay down and feigned illness. When the king came to see him, Amnon said, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, so that I may eat from her hand.”
2 Samuel 13:10 Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the bedroom, so that I may eat it from your hand.” Tamar took the cakes she had made and went to her brother Amnon’s bedroom.
- כַּוָּן kavvâncake, sacrificial caketranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H3561Noun · Translated: cakes 1, sacrificial cakes 1Full study and all 2 verses →
Jeremiah 7:18 The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven; they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke Me to anger.
Jeremiah 44:19 “Moreover,” said the women, “when we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands’ knowledge that we made sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?”
- אֶשְׁפָּר eshpârmeasured portiontranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H829Noun · Translated: date cake 2Full study and all 2 verses →
2 Samuel 6:19 Then he distributed to every man and woman among the multitude of Israel a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake. And all the people departed, each to his own home.
1 Chronicles 16:3 Then he distributed to every man and woman of Israel a loaf of bread, a date cake, and a raisin cake.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.