Word study

David

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “david”. 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 “David” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • דָּוִד DâvidDavidtranslated this way 990 times of its 1,046 uses · Strong’s H1732Noun  ·  Translated: David 902, David's 67, made david 4, Thus David 3

    Ruth 4:17 The neighbor women said, “A son has been born to Naomi,” and they named him Obed. He became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

    1 Samuel 16:13 So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. Then Samuel set out and went to Ramah.

    Full study and all 902 verses →
  • יָצָא yâtsâgo or come outtranslated this way 4 times of its 1,035 uses · Strong’s H3318Verb  ·  Translated: brought 108, went 103, go 82, came 78Full study and all 975 verses →
  • שָׁלַח shâlachsendtranslated this way 4 times of its 829 uses · Strong’s H7971Verb  ·  Translated: sent 334, send 126, go 43, sending 19Full study and all 783 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Δαβίδ DabídDavidtranslated this way 59 times of its 59 uses · Strong’s G1138Noun  ·  Translated: David 58, David's 1

    Matthew 1:1 This is the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

    Mark 2:25 Jesus replied, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?

    Full study and all 54 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.

What the Bible says about David: passages by topic →

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.