Word study

Courtyard

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָצֵר châtsêrenclosure, courttranslated this way 68 times of its 184 uses · Strong’s H2691Noun  ·  Translated: courtyard 61, court 43, villages 28, along with their villages 19

    Exodus 8:13 And the LORD did as Moses requested, and the frogs in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields died.

    Leviticus 6:16 Aaron and his sons are to eat the remainder. It must be eaten without leaven in a holy place; they are to eat it in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting.

    Full study and all 161 verses →
  • גִּזְרָה gizrâhcutting, separationtranslated this way 7 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H1508Noun  ·  Translated: temple courtyard 6, appearance 1, courtyard 1

    Ezekiel 41:12 Now the building that faced the temple courtyard on the west was seventy cubits wide, and the wall of the building was five cubits thick all around, with a length of ninety cubits.

    Ezekiel 41:13 Then he measured the temple to be a hundred cubits long, and the temple courtyard and the building with its walls were also a hundred cubits long.

    Full study and all 8 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • αὐλή aulḗcourt-yard, fore-court, palace, housetranslated this way 8 times of its 11 uses · Strong’s G833Noun  ·  Translated: courtyard 8, palace 1, house 1, fold 1

    Matthew 26:3 At that time the chief priests and elders of the people assembled in the courtyard of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas,

    Mark 14:54 Peter followed Him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he sat with the officers and warmed himself by the fire.

    Full study and all 11 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.