Word study

Corpse

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נְבֵלָה nebêlâhcarcass, corpsetranslated this way 7 times of its 44 uses · Strong’s H5038Noun  ·  Translated: body 11, carcass 10, carcasses 8, corpses 7

    Deuteronomy 28:26 Your corpses will be food for all the birds of the air and beasts of the earth, with no one to scare them away.

    Psalm 79:2 They have given the corpses of Your servants as food to the birds of the air, the flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the earth.

    Full study and all 41 verses →
  • פֶּגֶר pegercorpse, carcasstranslated this way 7 times of its 23 uses · Strong’s H6297Noun  ·  Translated: bodies 7, corpses 7, carcasses 2, funeral offerings 2

    2 Chronicles 20:24 When the men of Judah came to a place overlooking the wilderness, they looked for the vast army, but there were only corpses lying on the ground; no one had escaped.

    Isaiah 34:3 Their slain will be left unburied, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • נֶפֶשׁ nepheshsoul, living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, and passiontranslated this way 2 times of its 666 uses · Strong’s H5315Noun  ·  Translated: soul 178, life 119, lives 30, person 22

    Leviticus 22:4 If a descendant of Aaron has a skin disease or a discharge, he may not eat the sacred offerings until he is clean. Whoever touches anything defiled by a corpse or by a man who has an emission of semen,

    Full study and all 622 verses →
  • מוּת mûthdietranslated this way 1 time of its 771 uses · Strong’s H4191Verb  ·  Translated: die 198, died 152, dead 89, put to death 47

    Numbers 19:13 Anyone who touches a human corpse and fails to purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the LORD. That person must be cut off from Israel. He remains unclean, because the water of purification has not been sprinkled on him, and his uncleanness is still on him.

    Full study and all 694 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • νεκρός nekrósdead, a corpsetranslated this way 1 time of its 126 uses · Strong’s G3498Adjective  ·  Translated: dead 110, of 11, death 2, corpse 1

    Mark 9:26 After shrieking and convulsing him violently, the spirit came out. The boy became like a corpse, so that many said, “He is dead.”

    Full study and all 118 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.