Word study

Esteem

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קָלָה qâlâhbelightly esteemed, dishonouredtranslated this way 2 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H7034Verb  ·  Translated: lightly esteemed 2, degraded 1, dishonors 1, gathered together 1

    1 Samuel 18:23 But when Saul’s servants relayed these words to David, he replied, “Does it seem trivial in your sight to be the son-in-law of the king? I am a poor man and lightly esteemed.”

    Proverbs 12:9 Better to be lightly esteemed yet have a servant, than to be self-important but lack food.

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • חָשַׁב châshabthink, accounttranslated this way 2 times of its 118 uses · Strong’s H2803Verb  ·  Translated: considered 10, regarded 7, devise 7, devised 6

    Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

    Lamentations 4:2 How the precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in pure gold, are now esteemed as jars of clay, the work of a potter’s hands!

    Full study and all 117 verses →
  • יָקַר yâqarbe precious, prized, appraisedtranslated this way 1 time of its 11 uses · Strong’s H3365Verb  ·  Translated: precious 6, esteemed 1, costly 1, Seldom 1

    1 Samuel 18:30 Every time the Philistine commanders came out for battle, David was more successful than all of Saul’s officers, so that his name was highly esteemed.

    Full study and all 11 verses →
  • נָבַט nâbaṭlooktranslated this way 1 time of its 68 uses · Strong’s H5027Verb  ·  Translated: look 24, looked 8, see 7, consider 6

    Isaiah 66:2 Has not My hand made all these things? And so they came into being,” declares the LORD. “This is the one I will esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, who trembles at My word.

    Full study and all 66 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • δοκέω dokéōI think, seem, appear, it seemstranslated this way 1 time of its 62 uses · Strong’s G1380Verb  ·  Translated: think 17, thinks 6, thought 5, seems 4

    Galatians 2:6 But as for the highly esteemed— whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favoritism— those leaders added nothing to me.

    Full study and all 61 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.