Word study

Disguise

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: disguised, disguise, disguising, disguises. 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 “disguise” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָפַשׂ châphassearchtranslated this way 7 times of its 23 uses · Strong’s H2664Verb  ·  Translated: search 4, disguised 4, disguise 2

    1 Samuel 28:8 So Saul disguised himself by putting on different clothes, and he set out with two of his men. They came to the woman at night, and Saul said, “Consult a spirit for me. Bring up for me the one I name.”

    1 Kings 20:38 and the prophet went and waited on the road for the king, disguising himself with a bandage over his eyes.

    Full study and all 20 verses →
  • נָכַר nâkarregard, recognizetranslated this way 3 times of its 48 uses · Strong’s H5234Verb  ·  Translated: recognized 7, recognize 4, acknowledge 4, show partiality 3

    1 Kings 14:5 But the LORD had said to Ahijah, “Behold, the wife of Jeroboam is coming to ask you about her son, for he is ill. You are to say such and such to her, because when she arrives, she will be disguised.”

    Proverbs 26:24 A hateful man disguises himself with his speech, but he lays up deceit in his heart.

    Full study and all 46 verses →
  • כָּסָה kâsâhcovertranslated this way 1 time of its 150 uses · Strong’s H3680Verb  ·  Translated: covered 51, cover 36, covers 16, covering 9

    Genesis 38:14 she removed her widow’s garments, covered her face with a veil to disguise herself, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the way to Timnah. For she saw that although Shelah had grown up, she had not been given to him as a wife.

    Full study and all 148 verses →
  • שָׁנָה shânâhchangetranslated this way 1 time of its 22 uses · Strong’s H8138Verb  ·  Translated: change 2

    1 Kings 14:2 and Jeroboam said to his wife, “Now get up, disguise yourself so they will not recognize you as my wife, and go to Shiloh. For Ahijah the prophet is there; it was he who spoke about my kingship over this people.

    Full study and all 21 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.