Word study

Enjoy

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: enjoy, enjoyed, enjoying, enjoys. 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 “enjoy” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אָכַל âkaleattranslated this way 6 times of its 784 uses · Strong’s H398Verb  ·  Translated: eat 341, ate 64, eaten 63, consumed 39

    Nehemiah 9:36 So here we are today as slaves in the land You gave our fathers to enjoy its fruit and goodness— here we are as slaves!

    Proverbs 13:2 From the fruit of his lips a man enjoys good things, but the desire of the faithless is violence.

    Full study and all 696 verses →
  • רָצָה râtsâhbe pleased with, accept favourablytranslated this way 5 times of its 57 uses · Strong’s H7521Verb  ·  Translated: accept 12, delight 6, pleased 5, accepted 4

    Leviticus 26:34 Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths all the days it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies. At that time the land will rest and enjoy its Sabbaths.

    2 Chronicles 36:21 So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah.

    Full study and all 55 verses →
  • רָאָה rââhseetranslated this way 5 times of its 1,266 uses · Strong’s H7200Verb  ·  Translated: see 354, saw 285, seen 124, look 45Full study and all 1,181 verses →
  • חָלַל châlalbore, piercetranslated this way 4 times of its 138 uses · Strong’s H2490Verb  ·  Translated: began 24, profaned 24, profane 14, defile 10

    Deuteronomy 20:6 Has any man planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy its fruit? Let him return home, or he may die in battle and another man enjoy its fruit.

    Jeremiah 31:5 Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria; the farmers will plant and enjoy the fruit.

    Full study and all 129 verses →
  • שָׂמֵחַ sâmêachglad, joyful, merrytranslated this way 2 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H8056Adjective  ·  Translated: rejoicing 5, joyful 5, enjoy 2, rejoice 2

    Esther 5:14 His wife Zeresh and all his friends told him, “Have them build a gallows fifty cubits high, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai hanged on it. Then go to the banquet with the king and enjoy yourself.” The advice pleased Haman, and he had the gallows constructed.

    Proverbs 2:14 from those who enjoy doing evil and rejoice in the twistedness of evil,

    Full study and all 21 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.