Word study
Downcast
3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “downcast”. 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 “downcast” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- שָׁחַח shâchachbow, be bowed down, crouchtranslated this way 3 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H7817Verb · Translated: brought low 5, downcast 3, humbled 2, bow 2Full study and all 21 verses →
Psalm 42:5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.
Psalm 42:11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.
- רַע rabad, eviltranslated this way 1 time of its 651 uses · Strong’s H7451Adjective · Translated: evil 263, disaster 72, harm 38, wicked 31Full study and all 615 verses →
Genesis 40:7 So he asked the officials of Pharaoh who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so downcast today?”
- הָיָה hâyâhfall out, come to pass, become, betranslated this way 1 time of its 2,848 uses · Strong’s H1961Verb · Translated: will be 206, become 178, came 169, was 151Full study and all 2,573 verses →
Greek words (New Testament)
- ταπεινός tapeinóshumble, lowlytranslated this way 1 time of its 8 uses · Strong’s G5011Adjective · Translated: humble 3, to 2, lowly 1, downcast 1Full study and all 8 verses →
2 Corinthians 7:6 But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the arrival of Titus,
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.