Word study

Cargo

3 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָבָה râbâhbe, or become, much, many, greattranslated this way 1 time of its 219 uses · Strong’s H7235Verb  ·  Translated: multiply 39, multiplied 23, many 15, much 10

    1 Kings 10:11 (The fleet of Hiram that brought gold from Ophir also brought from Ophir a great cargo of almug wood and precious stones.

    Full study and all 207 verses →
  • כָּבַד kâbadbe heavy, weighty, burdensome, honouredtranslated this way 1 time of its 109 uses · Strong’s H3513Verb  ·  Translated: honor 19, honored 11, heavy 10, hardened 6

    Ezekiel 27:25 The ships of Tarshish carried your merchandise. And you were filled with heavy cargo in the heart of the sea.

    Full study and all 105 verses →
  • כְּלִי kelîarticle, utensil, vesseltranslated this way 1 time of its 282 uses · Strong’s H3627Noun  ·  Translated: articles 59, utensils 32, weapons 20, furnishings 15Full study and all 255 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • γόμος gómosa cargo, freighttranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G1117Noun  ·  Translated: cargo 3

    Acts 21:3 After sighting Cyprus and passing south of it, we sailed on to Syria and landed at Tyre, where the ship was to unload its cargo.

    Revelation 18:11 And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because there is no one left to buy their cargo —

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • φορτίον phortíona burden, freighttranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s G5413Noun  ·  Translated: load 2, burden 1, loads 1, heavy burdens 1

    Acts 27:10 “Men, I can see that our voyage will be filled with disaster and great loss, not only to ship and cargo, but to our own lives as well.”

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • ἐκβολή ekbolḗa throwing out, a jettisoningtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s G1546Noun  ·  Translated: jettison the cargo 1

    Acts 27:18 We were tossed so violently that the next day the men began to jettison the cargo.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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.