Word study

Desirable

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בָּחַר bâcharchoosetranslated this way 3 times of its 171 uses · Strong’s H977Verb  ·  Translated: chosen 73, choose 44, chose 21, chooses 6

    Proverbs 16:16 How much better to acquire wisdom than gold! To gain understanding is more desirable than silver.

    Proverbs 21:3 To do righteousness and justice is more desirable to the LORD than sacrifice.

    Full study and all 163 verses →
  • חֶמֶד chemeddesire, delighttranslated this way 3 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H2531Noun  ·  Translated: desirable 3, fruitful 1, pleasant 1, lush 1

    Ezekiel 23:6 clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all desirable young men, horsemen mounted on steeds.

    Ezekiel 23:12 She too lusted after the Assyrians — governors and commanders, warriors dressed in splendor, horsemen riding on steeds, all desirable young men.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • חָמַד châmaddesire, take pleasure intranslated this way 1 time of its 23 uses · Strong’s H2530Verb  ·  Translated: covet 6, delight 2, desire 2, precious 2

    Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

    Full study and all 22 verses →
  • חֶמְדָּה chemdâhid.translated this way 1 time of its 23 uses · Strong’s H2532Noun  ·  Translated: pleasant 3, precious 3, highly precious 2, riches 2

    Jeremiah 3:19 Then I said, ‘How I long to make you My sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations!’ I thought you would call Me ‘Father’ and never turn away from following Me.

    Full study and all 23 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.