Word study

Early

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “early”. 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 “early” 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)

  • שָׁכַם shâkamstart, rise, earlytranslated this way 35 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H7925Verb  ·  Translated: got up early 13, got 11, again and again 8, get up early 5

    Genesis 19:2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside into the house of your servant; wash your feet and spend the night. Then you can rise early and go on your way.” “No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”

    Exodus 8:20 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, and when Pharaoh goes out to the water, stand before him and tell him that this is what the LORD says: ‘Let My people go, so that they may worship Me.

    Full study and all 64 verses →
  • בֹּקֶר bôqermorningtranslated this way 8 times of its 192 uses · Strong’s H1242Noun  ·  Translated: morning 151, next morning 19, Early the next morning 5, Early in the morning 3

    Genesis 19:27 Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the LORD.

    Numbers 14:40 Early the next morning they got up and went up toward the ridge of the hill country. “We have indeed sinned,” they said, “but we will go to the place the LORD has promised.”

    Full study and all 179 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • πρωΐ prōḯearly in the morning, at dawntranslated this way 5 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s G4404Adverb  ·  Translated: morning 7, Early 3, Early in the morning 1, early morning 1

    Mark 1:35 Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a solitary place to pray.

    John 18:28 Then they led Jesus away from Caiaphas into the Praetorium. By now it was early morning, and the Jews did not enter the Praetorium, to avoid being defiled and unable to eat the Passover.

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • ἀρχαῖος archaîosoriginal, primitive, ancienttranslated this way 2 times of its 11 uses · Strong’s G744Adjective  ·  Translated: ancient 4, old 3, ancients 2, early 2

    Acts 15:7 After much discussion, Peter got up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that the Gentiles would hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe.

    Acts 21:16 Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us, and they took us to stay at the home of Mnason the Cypriot, an early disciple.

    Full study and all 11 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.