Word study

Choicest

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מִבְחָר mibchârchoicest, besttranslated this way 4 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s H4005Noun  ·  Translated: choicest 4, finest 3, choice 2, best 1

    Isaiah 22:7 Your choicest valleys are full of chariots, and horsemen are posted at the gates.

    Jeremiah 22:7 I will appoint destroyers against you, each man with his weapons, and they will cut down the choicest of your cedars and throw them into the fire.

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • מֶגֶד megedexcellencetranslated this way 2 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H4022Noun  ·  Translated: choicest 2

    Song of Solomon 4:13 Your branches are an orchard of pomegranates with the choicest of fruits, with henna and nard,

    Song of Solomon 4:16 Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind. Breathe on my garden and spread the fragrance of its spices. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choicest fruits.

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • שֹׂרֵק sôrêqvinetranslated this way 1 time of its 3 uses · Strong’s H8321Noun  ·  Translated: choicest branch 1, finest vines 1, vine 1

    Genesis 49:11 He ties his donkey to the vine, his colt to the choicest branch. He washes his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • חֶלֶב chelebfattranslated this way 1 time of its 88 uses · Strong’s H2459Noun  ·  Translated: fat 63, fat portions 5, finest 3, best part 2

    Deuteronomy 32:14 with curds from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, with rams from Bashan, and goats, with the choicest grains of wheat. From the juice of the finest grapes you drank the wine.

    Full study and all 69 verses →
  • שָׂרוּק sârûqvine-tendrilstranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H8291Adjective  ·  Translated: choicest vines 1

    Isaiah 16:8 For the fields of Heshbon have withered, along with the grapevines of Sibmah. The rulers of the nations have trampled its choicest vines, which had reached as far as Jazer and spread toward the desert. Their shoots had spread out and passed over the sea.

    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.