Word study

Egg

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: eggs, egg. 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 “egg” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בֵּיצָה bêtsâheggtranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H1000Noun  ·  Translated: eggs 6

    Deuteronomy 22:6 If you come across a bird’s nest with chicks or eggs, either in a tree or on the ground along the road, and the mother is sitting on the chicks or eggs, you must not take the mother along with the young.

    Job 39:14 For she leaves her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand.

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • בָּקַע bâqacleave, break open or throughtranslated this way 1 time of its 51 uses · Strong’s H1234Verb  ·  Translated: split 7, breached 4, divided 3, burst forth 2

    Isaiah 34:15 There the owl will make her nest; she will lay and hatch her eggs and gather her brood under her shadow. Even there the birds of prey will gather, each with its mate.

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • דָּגַר dâgargather together as a broodtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H1716Verb  ·  Translated: gather 1, hatching eggs 1

    Jeremiah 17:11 Like a partridge hatching eggs it did not lay is the man who makes a fortune unjustly. In the middle of his days his riches will desert him, and in the end he will be the fool.”

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • חַלָּמוּת challâmûthpurslaintranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H2495Noun  ·  Translated: egg 1

    Job 6:6 Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg?

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • פְּרִי perîfruittranslated this way 1 time of its 119 uses · Strong’s H6529Noun  ·  Translated: fruit 82, produce 11, offspring 5, fruitful 3

    Isaiah 14:29 Do not rejoice, all you Philistines, that the rod that struck you is broken. For a viper will spring from the root of the snake, and a flying serpent from its egg.

    Full study and all 107 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

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.