Word study

Elder

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: elders, elder. 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 “elder” 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)

  • זָקֵן zâqênoldtranslated this way 124 times of its 175 uses · Strong’s H2205Adjective  ·  Translated: elders 118, old 23, elderly 5, aged 3

    Genesis 50:7 Then Joseph went to bury his father, and all the servants of Pharaoh accompanied him — the elders of Pharaoh’s household and all the elders of the land of Egypt —

    Exodus 3:16 Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — has appeared to me and said: I have surely attended to you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt.

    Full study and all 169 verses →
  • שִׂיב sîbbe hoarytranslated this way 5 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H7868Noun  ·  Translated: elders 5

    Ezra 5:5 But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, so that they were not stopped until a report was sent to Darius and written instructions about this matter were returned.

    Ezra 5:9 So we questioned the elders and asked, “Who authorized you to rebuild this temple and restore this structure?”

    Full study and all 5 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • πρεσβύτερος presbýteroseldertranslated this way 59 times of its 66 uses · Strong’s G4245Adjective  ·  Translated: elders 56, older 3, elder 3, old men 1

    Matthew 15:2 “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands before they eat.”

    Mark 7:3 Now in holding to the tradition of the elders, the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat until they wash their hands ceremonially.

    Full study and all 66 verses →
  • πρεσβυτέριον presbytérionan assembly of elderstranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G4244Noun  ·  Translated: council of the elders 1, Council 1, elders 1

    Luke 22:66 At daybreak the council of the elders of the people, both the chief priests and scribes, met together. They led Jesus into their Sanhedrin and said,

    1 Timothy 4:14 Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given you through the prophecy spoken over you at the laying on of the hands of the elders.

    Full study and all 3 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.

What the Bible says about elder: passages by topic →

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.