Word study

Dignitary

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָשָׂא nâsâlift, take, carrytranslated this way 1 time of its 642 uses · Strong’s H5375Verb  ·  Translated: bear 49, lift 45, lifted 41, carried 38

    Isaiah 3:3 the commander of fifty and the dignitary, the counselor, the cunning magician, and the clever enchanter.

    Full study and all 601 verses →
  • כָּבוֹד kâbôdabundance, honour, glorytranslated this way 1 time of its 198 uses · Strong’s H3519Noun  ·  Translated: glory 124, honor 30, glorious 14, splendor 5

    Isaiah 5:13 Therefore My people will go into exile for their lack of understanding; their dignitaries are starving and their masses are parched with thirst.

    Full study and all 188 verses →
  • נָזִיר nâzîrone consecrated, devotedtranslated this way 1 time of its 16 uses · Strong’s H5139Noun  ·  Translated: Nazirite 9, prince 2, untended vines 2, dignitaries 1

    Lamentations 4:7 Her dignitaries were brighter than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than rubies, their appearance like sapphires.

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • כָּבַד kâbadbe heavy, weighty, burdensome, honouredtranslated this way 1 time of its 109 uses · Strong’s H3513Verb  ·  Translated: honor 19, honored 11, heavy 10, hardened 6

    Nahum 3:10 Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity. Her infants were dashed to pieces at the head of every street. They cast lots for her dignitaries, and all her nobles were bound in chains.

    Full study and all 105 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.