Word study
Deliverance
4 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “deliverance”. 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 “deliverance” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- נָצַל nâtsalstrip, plundertranslated this way 5 times of its 205 uses · Strong’s H5337Verb · Translated: deliver 75, delivered 34, rescue 30, rescued 9Full study and all 191 verses →
Job 10:7 though You know that I am not guilty, and there is no deliverance from Your hand?
Proverbs 10:2 Ill-gotten treasures profit nothing, but righteousness brings deliverance from death.
- פְּלֵיטָה pelêṭâhescapetranslated this way 4 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H6413Noun · Translated: escape 6, survivors 6, remnant 6, deliverance 4Full study and all 28 verses →
Genesis 45:7 God sent me before you to preserve you as a remnant on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
2 Chronicles 12:7 When the LORD saw that they had humbled themselves, the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah, saying, “They have humbled themselves; I will not destroy them, but will soon grant them deliverance. My wrath will not be poured out on Jerusalem through Shishak.
- תְּשׁוּעָה teshûâhdeliverance, salvationtranslated this way 3 times of its 34 uses · Strong’s H8668Noun · Translated: salvation 16, victory 10, deliverance 3, help 2Full study and all 32 verses →
Judges 15:18 And being very thirsty, Samson cried out to the LORD, “You have accomplished this great deliverance through Your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
1 Samuel 11:9 So they said to the messengers who had come, “Tell the men of Jabesh-gilead: ‘Deliverance will be yours tomorrow by the time the sun is hot.’” And when the messengers relayed this to the men of Jabesh, they rejoiced.
- יָשַׁע yâshadelivertranslated this way 2 times of its 203 uses · Strong’s H3467Verb · Translated: save 98, saved 40, saves 13, Savior 12Full study and all 198 verses →
Judges 13:5 For behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son. And no razor shall touch his head, because the boy will be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”
Psalm 31:2 Incline Your ear to me; come quickly to my rescue. Be my rock of refuge, the stronghold of my deliverance.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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 deliverance: 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.