Word study

Dawn

6 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שַׁחַר shachardawntranslated this way 17 times of its 20 uses · Strong’s H7837Noun  ·  Translated: dawn 13, like the dawn 2

    1 Samuel 9:26 They got up early in the morning, and just before dawn Samuel called to Saul on the roof, “Get ready, and I will send you on your way!” So Saul got ready, and both he and Samuel went outside together.

    Nehemiah 4:21 So we continued the work, while half of the men held spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out.

    Full study and all 20 verses →
  • אוֹר ôrlighttranslated this way 4 times of its 119 uses · Strong’s H216Noun  ·  Translated: light 86, lightning 5, dawn 3, daylight 3

    Judges 16:2 When the Gazites heard that Samson was there, they surrounded that place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. They were quiet throughout the night, saying, “Let us wait until dawn; then we will kill him.”

    1 Samuel 14:36 And Saul said, “Let us go down after the Philistines by night and plunder them until dawn, leaving no man alive!” “Do what seems good to you,” the troops replied. But the priest said, “We must consult God here.”

    Full study and all 108 verses →
  • בֹּקֶר bôqermorningtranslated this way 3 times of its 192 uses · Strong’s H1242Noun  ·  Translated: morning 151, next morning 19, Early the next morning 5, Early in the morning 3

    2 Samuel 23:4 is like the light of the morning at sunrise of a cloudless dawn, the glistening after the rain on the sprouting grass of the earth.’

    Job 4:20 They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.

    Full study and all 179 verses →
  • זָרַח zârachrise, come forthtranslated this way 2 times of its 17 uses · Strong’s H2224Verb  ·  Translated: rises 5, rise 2

    Deuteronomy 33:2 He said: “The LORD came from Sinai and dawned upon us from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran and came with myriads of holy ones, with flaming fire at His right hand.

    Psalm 112:4 Light dawns in the darkness for the upright — for the gracious, compassionate, and righteous.

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • עָלָה âlâhgo up, ascend, climbtranslated this way 2 times of its 873 uses · Strong’s H5927Verb  ·  Translated: go 118, went 107, brought 56, come 42

    Joshua 6:15 Then on the seventh day, they got up at dawn and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. That was the only day they circled the city seven times.

    Judges 19:25 But the men would not listen to him. So the Levite took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.

    Full study and all 807 verses →
  • נֶשֶׁף neshephtwilighttranslated this way 2 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s H5399Noun  ·  Translated: twilight 7, dawn 2, morning 1, evening 1

    Job 7:4 When I lie down I think: ‘When will I get up?’ But the night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn.

    Psalm 119:147 I rise before dawn and cry for help; in Your word I have put my hope.

    Full study and all 12 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.