Word study

Displease

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָעַע râabe evil, badtranslated this way 6 times of its 97 uses · Strong’s H7489Verb  ·  Translated: wicked 9, harm 8, evil 8, evildoers 8

    Genesis 48:17 When Joseph saw that his father had placed his right hand on Ephraim’s head, he was displeased and took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s.

    Numbers 22:34 “I have sinned,” Balaam said to the angel of the LORD, “for I did not realize that you were standing in the road to confront me. And now, if this is displeasing in your sight, I will go back home.”

    Full study and all 97 verses →
  • עַיִן ayineyetranslated this way 2 times of its 764 uses · Strong’s H5869Noun  ·  Translated: eyes 383, sight 186, eye 38, presence 13

    Numbers 11:10 Then Moses heard the people of family after family weeping at the entrances to their tents, and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly, and Moses was also displeased.

    1 Samuel 29:7 Therefore turn back now and go in peace, so that you will not do anything to displease the leaders of the Philistines.”

    Full study and all 731 verses →
  • רַע rabad, eviltranslated this way 1 time of its 651 uses · Strong’s H7451Adjective  ·  Translated: evil 263, disaster 72, harm 38, wicked 31

    Exodus 21:8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who had designated her for himself, he must allow her to be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, since he has broken faith with her.

    Full study and all 615 verses →
  • לֹא lônottranslated this way 1 time of its 4,657 uses · Strong’s H3808Adverb  ·  Translated: no 309, not 269, never 218, will not 156Full study and all 3,775 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

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.