Word study

Egyptian

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מִצְרִי MitsrîMitsritetranslated this way 61 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H4713Noun  ·  Translated: Egyptians 39, Egyptian 20, from 2, Egyptian's 1

    Genesis 12:12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live.

    Exodus 1:19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before a midwife arrives.”

    Full study and all 58 verses →
  • מִצְרַיִם MitsrayimEgypt, Egyptianstranslated this way 50 times of its 623 uses · Strong’s H4714Noun  ·  Translated: Egypt 558, Egyptians 46, Egypt's 5, Mizraim 4

    Genesis 40:5 both of these men — the Egyptian king’s cupbearer and baker, who were being held in the prison — had a dream on the same night, and each dream had its own meaning.

    Exodus 3:8 I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey— the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

    Full study and all 572 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Αἰγύπτιος AigýptiosEgyptiantranslated this way 4 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s G124Adjective  ·  Translated: Egyptian 3, of 1, Egyptians 1

    Acts 7:24 And when he saw one of them being mistreated, Moses went to his defense and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian who was oppressing him.

    Hebrews 11:29 By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were drowned.

    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.