Word study

Confirm

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: confirmed, confirm, confirms, confirming. 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 “confirm” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קוּם qûmarise, stand up, standtranslated this way 13 times of its 594 uses · Strong’s H6965Verb  ·  Translated: rise 68, got 61, set 44, Get 42

    Genesis 26:3 Stay in this land as a foreigner, and I will be with you and bless you. For I will give all these lands to you and your offspring, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

    Numbers 30:13 Her husband may confirm or nullify any vow or any sworn pledge to deny herself.

    Full study and all 570 verses →
  • אָמַן âmanconfirm, supporttranslated this way 4 times of its 104 uses · Strong’s H539Verb  ·  Translated: believe 24, faithful 14, trust 8, believed 7

    1 Samuel 3:20 So all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the LORD.

    1 Kings 8:26 And now, O God of Israel, please confirm what You promised to Your servant, my father David.

    Full study and all 98 verses →
  • עָמַד âmadtake one's stand, standtranslated this way 2 times of its 508 uses · Strong’s H5975Verb  ·  Translated: stood 99, stand 95, standing 50, stands 12

    1 Chronicles 16:17 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant:

    Psalm 105:10 He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant:

    Full study and all 485 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • βεβαιόω bebaióōI confirm, ratifytranslated this way 4 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s G950Verb  ·  Translated: confirmed 2

    Mark 16:20 And they went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked through them, confirming His word by the signs that accompanied it.

    Romans 15:8 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs,

    Full study and all 8 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.