Word study

Desolation

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שְׁמָמָה shemâmâha devastation, wastetranslated this way 19 times of its 56 uses · Strong’s H8077Noun  ·  Translated: desolate 26, desolation 19, wasteland 4

    Joshua 8:28 So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolation to this day.

    Isaiah 1:7 Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners devour your fields before you — a desolation demolished by strangers.

    Full study and all 52 verses →
  • שַׁמָּה shammâhwaste, appalmenttranslated this way 12 times of its 39 uses · Strong’s H8047Noun  ·  Translated: desolation 12, horror 7, object of horror 6, laid waste 3

    2 Kings 22:19 because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its people, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and because you have torn your clothes and wept before Me, I have heard you,’ declares the LORD.

    Isaiah 13:9 Behold, the Day of the LORD is coming— cruel, with fury and burning anger— to make the earth a desolation and to destroy the sinners within it.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • שָׁמֵם shâmêmbe desoleted, appalledtranslated this way 9 times of its 85 uses · Strong’s H8074Verb  ·  Translated: appalled 17, desolate 10, deserted 5, desolation 4

    2 Chronicles 36:21 So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah.

    Isaiah 61:4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations.

    Full study and all 81 verses →
  • חׇרְבָּה chorbâhwaste, desolation, ruintranslated this way 3 times of its 42 uses · Strong’s H2723Noun  ·  Translated: ruins 19, ruin 5, wasteland 3, desolation 3

    Jeremiah 25:9 behold, I will summon all the families of the north, declares the LORD, and I will send for My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, whom I will bring against this land, against its residents, and against all the surrounding nations. So I will devote them to destruction and make them an object of horror and contempt, an everlasting desolation.

    Daniel 9:2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the sacred books, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.

    Full study and all 42 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἐρήμωσις erḗmōsisdesolation, devastationtranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G2050Noun  ·  Translated: desolation 3

    Matthew 24:15 So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand),

    Mark 13:14 So when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

    Full study and all 3 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.