Word study

Captain

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רַב rabmuch, many, greattranslated this way 25 times of its 445 uses · Strong’s H7227Adjective  ·  Translated: many 171, great 65, captain 24, long 14

    2 Kings 25:8 On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign over Babylon, Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.

    Jeremiah 39:9 Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried away to Babylon the remnant of the people who had remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to him.

    Full study and all 426 verses →
  • שַׂר sarchieftain, chief, ruler, official, captain, princetranslated this way 17 times of its 401 uses · Strong’s H8269Noun  ·  Translated: commanders 74, officials 67, princes 63, commander 39

    Genesis 37:36 Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and captain of the guard.

    1 Kings 14:27 Then King Rehoboam made bronze shields in their place and committed them to the care of the captains of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.

    Full study and all 366 verses →
  • חֹבֵל chôbêlsailortranslated this way 3 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H2259Noun  ·  Translated: captains 3, sailors 1

    Ezekiel 27:8 The men of Sidon and Arvad were your oarsmen. Your men of skill, O Tyre, were there as your captains.

    Ezekiel 27:27 Your wealth, wares, and merchandise, your sailors, captains, and shipwrights, your merchants and all the warriors within you, with all the other people on board, will sink into the heart of the sea on the day of your downfall.

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • שָׁלִישׁ shâlîshthirdtranslated this way 2 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s H7991Noun  ·  Translated: officers 5, officer 4, captains 2

    1 Kings 9:22 But Solomon did not consign any of the Israelites to slavery, because they were his men of war, his servants, his officers, his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and cavalry.

    2 Chronicles 8:9 But Solomon did not consign any of the Israelites to slave labor, because they were his men of war, the leaders of his captains, and the commanders of his chariots and cavalry.

    Full study and all 15 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • στρατηγός stratēgósa general, magistrate, captain of the templetranslated this way 3 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s G4755Noun  ·  Translated: magistrates 5, captain 3, officers 1, temple officers 1

    Acts 4:1 While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to them,

    Acts 5:24 When the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests heard this account, they were perplexed as to what was happening.

    Full study and all 10 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.

What the Bible says about captain: passages by topic →

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.