Word study

Descend

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: descended, descend, descending, descends. 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 “descend” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָרַד yâradcome or go down, descendtranslated this way 31 times of its 372 uses · Strong’s H3381Verb  ·  Translated: went 56, go 55, come 35, came 26

    Genesis 15:11 And the birds of prey descended on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

    Exodus 19:18 Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD had descended on it in fire. And the smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.

    Full study and all 341 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 78

    Genesis 17:6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you.

    Genesis 35:11 And God told him, “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation — even a company of nations — shall come from you, and kings shall descend from you.

    Full study and all 975 verses →
  • יָלַד yâladbear, bring forth, begettranslated this way 2 times of its 484 uses · Strong’s H3205Verb  ·  Translated: father 111, born 57, bore 52, gave birth 44Full study and all 395 verses →
  • זֶרַע zerasowing, seed, offspringtranslated this way 2 times of its 220 uses · Strong’s H2233Noun  ·  Translated: descendants 78, offspring 45, seed 34, children 10Full study and all 201 verses →
  • נָפַל nâphalfall, lietranslated this way 2 times of its 432 uses · Strong’s H5307Verb  ·  Translated: fall 104, fell 77, fallen 54, falls 21Full study and all 403 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • καταβαίνω katabaínōI go down, come downtranslated this way 13 times of its 79 uses · Strong’s G2597Verb  ·  Translated: come 16, went 11, came 8, coming 7

    Matthew 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. Suddenly the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him.

    Mark 1:10 As soon as Jesus came up out of the water, He saw the heavens breaking open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove.

    Full study and all 79 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.