Word study

Certain

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אֶחָד echâdonetranslated this way 4 times of its 855 uses · Strong’s H259Number  ·  Translated: one 278, first 43, and one 43, a 36Full study and all 688 verses →
  • אָמַן âmanconfirm, supporttranslated this way 3 times of its 104 uses · Strong’s H539Verb  ·  Translated: believe 24, faithful 14, trust 8, believed 7

    Deuteronomy 28:66 So your life will hang in doubt before you, and you will be afraid night and day, never certain of survival.

    Psalm 27:13 Still I am certain to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

    Full study and all 98 verses →
  • יָדַע yâdaknowtranslated this way 2 times of its 914 uses · Strong’s H3045Verb  ·  Translated: know 453, known 53, knows 48, knew 38

    Genesis 15:13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years.

    Jeremiah 26:15 But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood upon yourselves, upon this city, and upon its residents; for truly the LORD has sent me to speak all these words in your hearing.”

    Full study and all 863 verses →
  • מָקוֹם mâqômstanding, spot, conditiontranslated this way 2 times of its 381 uses · Strong’s H4725Noun  ·  Translated: place 279, home 16, places 11, wherever 7

    Genesis 28:11 On reaching a certain place, he spent the night there because the sun had set. And taking one of the stones from that place, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.

    1 Samuel 21:2 “The king has given me a mission,” David replied. “He told me no one is to know about the mission on which I am sending you. And I have directed my young men to meet me at a certain place.

    Full study and all 364 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • τὶς tìsany one, some onetranslated this way 11 times of its 449 uses · Strong’s G5100Interrogative / Indefinite Pronoun  ·  Translated: some 96, anyone 96, a 65, anything 30

    Luke 12:16 Then He told them a parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced an abundance.

    Acts 20:9 And a certain young man named Eutychus, seated in the window, was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell from the third story and was picked up dead.

    Full study and all 420 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.