Word study

Defect

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מאוּם mûmblemish, defecttranslated this way 10 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s H3971Noun  ·  Translated: defect 9, flaw 2, blemish 2

    Leviticus 21:17 “Say to Aaron, ‘For the generations to come, none of your descendants who has a physical defect may approach to offer the food of his God.

    Numbers 19:2 “This is the statute of the law that the LORD has commanded: Instruct the Israelites to bring you an unblemished red heifer that has no defect and has never been placed under a yoke.

    Full study and all 17 verses →
  • נָפַל nâphalfall, lietranslated this way 6 times of its 432 uses · Strong’s H5307Verb  ·  Translated: fall 104, fell 77, fallen 54, falls 21

    1 Samuel 29:3 Then the commanders of the Philistines asked, “What about these Hebrews?” Achish replied, “Is this not David, the servant of King Saul of Israel? He has been with me all these days, even years, and from the day he defected until today I have found no fault in him.”

    2 Kings 25:11 Then Nebuzaradan captain of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the deserters who had defected to the king of Babylon and the rest of the population.

    Full study and all 403 verses →
  • תְּבַּלֻּל teballulconfusion, obscuritytranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H8400Noun  ·  Translated: defect 1

    Leviticus 21:20 or who is a hunchback or dwarf, or who has an eye defect, a festering rash, scabs, or a crushed testicle.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • בָּדַל bâdalbe divided, separatetranslated this way 1 time of its 41 uses · Strong’s H914Verb  ·  Translated: separated 6, set apart 6, separate 6, distinguish 3

    1 Chronicles 12:8 Some Gadites defected to David at his stronghold in the wilderness. They were mighty men of valor, trained for battle, experts with the shield and spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions and who were as swift as gazelles on the mountains:

    Full study and all 40 verses →
  • עַל alheighttranslated this way 1 time of its 4,859 uses · Strong’s H5921Preposition  ·  Translated: on 777, over 297, in 218, against 216Full study and all 3,996 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.