Word study

Chop

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • כָּרַת kârathcut off, cut downtranslated this way 5 times of its 284 uses · Strong’s H3772Verb  ·  Translated: cut 144, made 47, make 28, fail 7

    Exodus 34:13 Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles.

    Deuteronomy 19:5 If he goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut timber and swings his axe to chop down a tree, but the blade flies off the handle and strikes and kills his neighbor, he may flee to one of these cities to save his life.

    Full study and all 276 verses →
  • גָּדַע gâdahew, hew down or offtranslated this way 2 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H1438Verb  ·  Translated: cut 13, chopped 2, cut to pieces 2

    2 Chronicles 14:3 He removed the foreign altars and high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and chopped down the Asherah poles.

    2 Chronicles 31:1 When all this had ended, the Israelites in attendance went out to the cities of Judah and broke up the sacred pillars, chopped down the Asherah poles, and tore down the high places and altars throughout Judah and Benjamin, as well as in Ephraim and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all. Then all the Israelites returned to their cities, each to his own property.

    Full study and all 22 verses →
  • קְצַץ qetsatstranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H7113Verb  ·  Translated: chop 1

    Daniel 4:14 He called out in a loud voice: ‘Cut down the tree and chop off its branches; strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it, and the birds from its branches.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • פָּרַשׂ pârasspread out, spreadtranslated this way 1 time of its 65 uses · Strong’s H6566Verb  ·  Translated: spread 44, spreading 3, scattered 3, spreads 3

    Micah 3:3 You eat the flesh of my people after stripping off their skin and breaking their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”

    Full study and all 64 verses →
  • בָּקַע bâqacleave, break open or throughtranslated this way 1 time of its 51 uses · Strong’s H1234Verb  ·  Translated: split 7, breached 4, divided 3, burst forth 2

    1 Samuel 6:14 The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth-shemesh and stopped there near a large rock. The people chopped up the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the LORD.

    Full study and all 50 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.