Word study

Crowd

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: crowd, crowds, crowded, crowding. 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 “crowd” 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)

  • הָמוֹן hâmônsound, murmur, roar, crowd, abundancetranslated this way 3 times of its 81 uses · Strong’s H1995Noun  ·  Translated: multitude 12, army 10, multitudes 8, many 6

    Job 31:34 because I greatly feared the crowds and the contempt of the clans terrified me, so that I kept silent and would not go outside —

    Ezekiel 23:42 accompanied by the sound of a carefree crowd. Drunkards were brought in from the desert along with men from the rabble, who put bracelets on your wrists and beautiful crowns on your head.

    Full study and all 77 verses →
  • רַב rabmuch, many, greattranslated this way 2 times of its 445 uses · Strong’s H7227Adjective  ·  Translated: many 171, great 65, captain 24, long 14

    Exodus 23:2 You shall not follow the crowd in wrongdoing. When you testify in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd.

    Full study and all 426 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ὄχλος óchlosa crowdtranslated this way 147 times of its 171 uses · Strong’s G3793Noun  ·  Translated: crowd 98, crowds 49, people 17, multitude 3

    Matthew 4:25 Large crowds followed Him, having come from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

    Mark 2:4 Since they were unable to get to Jesus through the crowd, they uncovered the roof above Him, made an opening, and lowered the paralytic on his mat.

    Full study and all 166 verses →
  • πλῆθος plēthosa multitudetranslated this way 5 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s G4128Noun  ·  Translated: number 5, crowd 4, multitude 4, congregation 2

    Mark 3:7 So Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, accompanied by a large crowd from Galilee, Judea,

    Acts 2:6 And when this sound rang out, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking his own language.

    Full study and all 31 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.