Word study

Drag

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: dragged, drag, drags, dragging. 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 “drag” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • סָחַב sâchabdragtranslated this way 5 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H5498Verb  ·  Translated: dragged away 3, drag 1, drag away 1

    2 Samuel 17:13 If he retreats to a city, all Israel will bring ropes to that city, and we will drag it down to the valley until not even a pebble can be found there.”

    Jeremiah 15:3 I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • מָשַׁךְ mâshakdraw, dragtranslated this way 2 times of its 34 uses · Strong’s H4900Verb  ·  Translated: draw 3, drew 2, tall 2, Extend 2

    Job 24:22 Yet by His power, God drags away the mighty; though rising up, they have no assurance of life.

    Psalm 28:3 Do not drag me away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors while malice is in their hearts.

    Full study and all 34 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἑλκύω helkýōI drag, draw, pull, persuadetranslated this way 4 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s G1670Verb  ·  Translated: dragged 3, draws 1, draw 1, drew 1

    John 21:11 So Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many, the net was not torn.

    Acts 16:19 When the girl’s owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them before the authorities in the marketplace.

    Full study and all 8 verses →
  • σύρω sýrōI draw, dragtranslated this way 4 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s G4951Verb  ·  Translated: dragged 4, swept 1

    John 21:8 The other disciples came ashore in the boat. They dragged in the net full of fish, for they were not far from land, only about a hundred yards.

    Acts 8:3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

    Full study and all 5 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.