Word study

Dung

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “dung”. 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 “dung” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • פֶּרֶשׁ pereshfecal mattertranslated this way 6 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H6569Noun  ·  Translated: dung 6, waste 1

    Exodus 29:14 But burn the flesh of the bull and its hide and dung outside the camp; it is a sin offering.

    Leviticus 4:11 But the hide of the bull and all its flesh, with its head and legs and its entrails and dung—

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • דֹּמֶן dômendungtranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H1828Noun  ·  Translated: like dung 5, dung 1

    2 Kings 9:37 And Jezebel’s body will lie like dung in the field on the plot of ground at Jezreel, so that no one can say: This is Jezebel.’”

    Psalm 83:10 who perished at Endor and became like dung on the ground.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • אַשְׁפֹּת ashpôthash-heap(?), refuse-heap, dung-hilltranslated this way 4 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H830Noun  ·  Translated: Dung 3, ash heap 1, toward the dung 1, dump 1

    Nehemiah 2:13 So I went out at night through the Valley Gate toward the Well of the Serpent and the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and the gates that had been destroyed by fire.

    Nehemiah 3:13 The Valley Gate was repaired by Hanun and the residents of Zanoah. They rebuilt it, installed its doors, bolts, and bars, and repaired a thousand cubits of the wall as far as the Dung Gate.

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • חֶרֶא cheredungtranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H2716Noun  ·  Translated: dung 2, dove's dung 1

    2 Kings 6:25 So there was a great famine in Samaria. Indeed, they besieged the city so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter cab of dove’s dung sold for five shekels of silver.

    Isaiah 36:12 But the Rabshakeh replied, “Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • גָּלָל gâlâldungtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H1557Noun  ·  Translated: dung 1, like dung 1

    1 Kings 14:10 Because of all this, behold, I am bringing disaster on the house of Jeroboam: I will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both slave and free, in Israel; I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns up dung until it is gone!

    Zephaniah 1:17 I will bring such distress on mankind that they will walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the LORD. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung.

    Full study and all 2 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.