Word study

Censer

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מַחְתָּה machtâhfire-holder, censer, snuff-dishtranslated this way 15 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H4289Noun  ·  Translated: censers 10, censer 4, trays 3, firepans 3

    Leviticus 10:1 Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense, and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to His command.

    Numbers 16:6 You, Korah, and all your followers are to do as follows: Take censers,

    Full study and all 19 verses →
  • מִקְטֶרֶת miqṭerethcensertranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H4730Noun  ·  Translated: censer 2

    2 Chronicles 26:19 Uzziah, with a censer in his hand to offer incense, was enraged. But while he raged against the priests in their presence in the house of the LORD before the altar of incense, leprosy broke out on his forehead.

    Ezekiel 8:11 Before them stood seventy elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had a censer in his hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.

    Full study and all 2 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • λιβανωτός libanōtósa censertranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G3031Noun  ·  Translated: censer 2

    Revelation 8:3 Then another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, along with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne.

    Revelation 8:5 Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it to the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

    Full study and all 2 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 censer: 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.