Word study

Ceremonially

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • טָהוֹר ṭâhôrclean, puretranslated this way 14 times of its 89 uses · Strong’s H2889Adjective  ·  Translated: pure 37, clean 31, ceremonially clean 11, unclean 3

    Leviticus 4:12 all the rest of the bull— he must take outside the camp to a ceremonially clean place where the ashes are poured out, and there he must burn it on a wood fire on the ash heap.

    Numbers 9:13 But if a man who is ceremonially clean and is not on a journey still fails to observe the Passover, he must be cut off from his people, because he did not present the LORD’s offering at its appointed time. That man will bear the consequences of his sin.

    Full study and all 84 verses →
  • טָהֵר ṭâhêrbe clean, puretranslated this way 4 times of its 94 uses · Strong’s H2891Verb  ·  Translated: clean 25, cleansed 22, cleanse 16, purified 6

    Leviticus 12:7 And the priest will present them before the LORD and make atonement for her; and she shall be ceremonially cleansed from her flow of blood. This is the law for a woman giving birth, whether to a male or to a female.

    Numbers 8:6 “Take the Levites from among the Israelites and make them ceremonially clean.

    Full study and all 79 verses →
  • טָמֵא ṭâmêbe or become uncleantranslated this way 3 times of its 158 uses · Strong’s H2930Verb  ·  Translated: unclean 47, defiled 38, defile 23, pronounce him unclean 10

    Numbers 19:7 Then the priest must wash his clothes and bathe his body in water; after that he may enter the camp, but he will be ceremonially unclean until evening.

    Numbers 19:8 The one who burned the heifer must also wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and he too will be ceremonially unclean until evening.

    Full study and all 141 verses →
  • טָמֵא ṭâmêuncleantranslated this way 2 times of its 85 uses · Strong’s H2931Adjective  ·  Translated: unclean 67, defiled 6, unclean person 2, ceremonially unclean 2

    Deuteronomy 12:22 Indeed, you may eat it as you would eat a gazelle or deer; both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat it.

    Deuteronomy 15:22 Eat it within your gates; both the ceremonially unclean and clean may eat it as they would a gazelle or a deer.

    Full study and all 78 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.

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.