Word study
Capture
6 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: captured, capture, captures, capturing. 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 “capture” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- לָכַד lâkadcapture, seize, take (by lot)translated this way 82 times of its 120 uses · Strong’s H3920Verb · Translated: captured 62, capture 12, selected 9, caught 8Full study and all 112 verses →
Numbers 21:32 After Moses had sent spies to Jazer, Israel captured its villages and drove out the Amorites who were there.
Deuteronomy 2:34 At that time we captured all his cities and devoted to destruction the people of every city, including women and children. We left no survivors.
- לָקַח lâqachtaketranslated this way 11 times of its 938 uses · Strong’s H3947Verb · Translated: take 247, took 245, taken 40, get 26Full study and all 890 verses →
Numbers 21:25 Israel captured all the cities of the Amorites and occupied them, including Heshbon and all its villages.
- תָּפַשׂ tâphaslay hold of, wieldtranslated this way 11 times of its 64 uses · Strong’s H8610Verb · Translated: seized 8, captured 7, take 4, Seize 4Full study and all 60 verses →
Deuteronomy 20:19 When you lay siege to a city for an extended time while fighting against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit. You must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them?
1 Samuel 15:8 He captured Agag king of Amalek alive, but devoted all the others to destruction with the sword.
- שָׁבָה shâbâhtake captivetranslated this way 5 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H7617Verb · Translated: captives 6, captors 6, captured 5, taken captive 5Full study and all 41 verses →
Genesis 14:14 And when Abram heard that his relative had been captured, he mobilized the 318 trained men born in his household, and they set out in pursuit as far as Dan.
Numbers 21:1 When the Canaanite king of Arad, who lived in the Negev, heard that Israel was coming along the road to Atharim, he attacked Israel and captured some prisoners.
- אָסַר âsartie, bind, imprisontranslated this way 3 times of its 66 uses · Strong’s H631Verb · Translated: bound 16, tied 5, prisoners 4, confined 3Full study and all 62 verses →
Song of Solomon 7:5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, the hair of your head like purple threads; the king is captured in your tresses.
Isaiah 22:3 All your rulers have fled together, captured without a bow. All your fugitives were captured together, having fled to a distant place.
- שְׁבִי shebîcaptivity, captivestranslated this way 2 times of its 49 uses · Strong’s H7628Noun · Translated: captivity 21, captives 8, exile 5, captive 3Full study and all 46 verses →
Daniel 11:33 Those with insight will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by sword or flame, or be captured or plundered.
Amos 4:10 “I sent plagues among you like those of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camp, yet you did not return to Me,” declares the LORD.
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.