Word study

Chew

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עָלָה âlâhgo up, ascend, climbtranslated this way 8 times of its 873 uses · Strong’s H5927Verb  ·  Translated: go 118, went 107, brought 56, come 42

    Leviticus 11:3 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof completely divided and that chews the cud.

    Deuteronomy 14:6 You may eat any animal that has a split hoof divided in two and that chews the cud.

    Full study and all 807 verses →
  • גָּרַר gârardrag, drag awaytranslated this way 1 time of its 5 uses · Strong’s H1641Verb  ·  Translated: chew 1, trimmed 1, sweep them away 1, slash 1

    Leviticus 11:7 And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • גֵּרָה gêrâhcudtranslated this way 1 time of its 11 uses · Strong’s H1625Noun  ·  Translated: cud 10, chew the cud 1

    Deuteronomy 14:8 as well as the pig; though it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. It is unclean for you. You must not eat its meat or touch its carcass.

    Full study and all 9 verses →
  • נָשַׁךְ nâshakbitetranslated this way 1 time of its 15 uses · Strong’s H5391Verb  ·  Translated: bitten 5, bites 3, bite 2

    Micah 3:5 This is what the LORD says: “As for the prophets who lead My people astray, who proclaim peace while they chew with their teeth, but declare war against one who puts nothing in their mouths:

    Full study and all 14 verses →
  • כָּרַת kârathcut off, cut downtranslated this way 1 time of its 284 uses · Strong’s H3772Verb  ·  Translated: cut 144, made 47, make 28, fail 7

    Numbers 11:33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and the LORD struck them with a severe plague.

    Full study and all 276 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.