Word study
Eastern
5 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “eastern”. 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 “eastern” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- קֶדֶם qedemfront, east, aforetimetranslated this way 5 times of its 85 uses · Strong’s H6924Noun · Translated: east 35, old 13, eastern 5, east side 4Full study and all 82 verses →
Genesis 10:30 Their territory extended from Mesha to Sephar, in the eastern hill country.
Numbers 34:10 And your eastern border will run straight from Hazar-enan to Shepham,
- קָדִים qâdîmEast, east windtranslated this way 3 times of its 68 uses · Strong’s H6921Noun · Translated: east 42, east wind 9, east side 5, eastward 3Full study and all 63 verses →
Ezekiel 45:7 Now the prince will have the area bordering each side of the area formed by the holy district and the property of the city, extending westward from the western side and eastward from the eastern side, running lengthwise from the western boundary to the eastern boundary and parallel to one of the tribal portions.
Ezekiel 47:18 On the east side the border will run between Hauran and Damascus, along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel, to the Eastern Sea and as far as Tamar. This will be the eastern boundary.
- קַדְמוֹנִי qadmônîformer, easterntranslated this way 3 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H6931Adjective · Translated: Eastern 3, east 2, old 1, things of old 1Full study and all 9 verses →
Ezekiel 47:18 On the east side the border will run between Hauran and Damascus, along the Jordan between Gilead and the land of Israel, to the Eastern Sea and as far as Tamar. This will be the eastern boundary.
Joel 2:20 The northern army I will drive away from you, banishing it to a barren and desolate land, its front ranks into the Eastern Sea, and its rear guard into the Western Sea. And its stench will rise; its foul odor will ascend. For He has done great things.
- מִזְרָח mizrâchplace of sunrise, easttranslated this way 1 time of its 70 uses · Strong’s H4217Noun · Translated: east 46, eastward 6, toward the sunrise 5, east side 4Full study and all 67 verses →
Joshua 4:19 On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho.
- קַדְמוֹן qadmôneasterntranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H6930Adjective · Translated: eastern 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Ezekiel 47:8 And he said to me, “This water flows out to the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah. When it empties into the Dead Sea, the water there becomes fresh.
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.