Word study
Countryside
3 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: countryside, countrysides. 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 “countryside” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- אֶרֶץ eretsearth, landtranslated this way 4 times of its 2,375 uses · Strong’s H776Noun · Translated: land 1,483, earth 564, ground 119, lands 41Full study and all 2,120 verses →
- שָׂדֶה sâdehid.translated this way 3 times of its 317 uses · Strong’s H7704Noun · Translated: field 185, fields 55, land 19, wild 13Full study and all 299 verses →
Song of Solomon 7:11 Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside; let us spend the night among the wildflowers.
Jeremiah 17:3 O My mountain in the countryside, I will give over your wealth and all your treasures as plunder, because of the sin of your high places, within all your borders.
- מִגְרָשׁ migrâshcommon, common-land, open landtranslated this way 1 time of its 51 uses · Strong’s H4054Noun · Translated: pasturelands 38, pastureland 4, together with their pasturelands 4Full study and all 51 verses →
Ezekiel 27:28 The countryside will shake when your sailors cry out.
Greek words (New Testament)
- ἀγρός agrósa field, the countrytranslated this way 5 times of its 35 uses · Strong’s G68Noun · Translated: field 22, fields 5, countryside 4, country 3Full study and all 34 verses →
Mark 5:14 Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.
Luke 8:34 When those tending the pigs saw what had happened, they ran off and reported this in the town and countryside.
- χώρα chṓraregion, land, fieldstranslated this way 1 time of its 26 uses · Strong’s G5561Noun · Translated: region 10, country 7, land 3, fields 2Full study and all 26 verses →
Mark 1:5 People went out to him from all of Jerusalem and the countryside of Judea. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.
- γῆ gēthe earth, soil, landtranslated this way 1 time of its 238 uses · Strong’s G1093Noun · Translated: earth 156, land 37, ground 19, soil 13Full study and all 217 verses →
John 3:22 After this, Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside, where He spent some time with them and baptized.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.