Word study

Eleven

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “eleven”. 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 “eleven” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אֶחָד echâdonetranslated this way 8 times of its 855 uses · Strong’s H259Number  ·  Translated: one 278, first 43, and one 43, a 36

    Genesis 32:22 During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

    Deuteronomy 1:2 It is an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by way of Mount Seir.

    Full study and all 688 verses →
  • עַשְׁתֵּי ashtêonetranslated this way 5 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s H6249Number  ·  Translated: eleventh 13, eleven 5, twelve 1

    Exodus 26:7 You are to make curtains of goat hair for the tent over the tabernacle — eleven curtains in all.

    Numbers 29:20 On the third day you are to present eleven bulls, two rams, and fourteen male lambs a year old, all unblemished,

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • אֶלֶף elephthousandtranslated this way 3 times of its 233 uses · Strong’s H505Number  ·  Translated: thousand 116, thousands 33, two thousand 10, clans 8

    Judges 16:5 The lords of the Philistines went to her and said, “Entice him and find out the source of his great strength and how we can overpower him to tie him up and subdue him. Then each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.”

    Judges 17:2 said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you and about which I heard you utter a curse— I have the silver here with me; I took it.” Then his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the LORD!”

    Full study and all 201 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἕνδεκα héndekaeleventranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G1733Adjective  ·  Translated: Eleven 6

    Matthew 28:16 Meanwhile, the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain Jesus had designated.

    Mark 16:14 Later, as they were eating, Jesus appeared to the Eleven and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.

    Full study and all 6 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.