Word study

Euphrates

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָהָר nâhârstream, rivertranslated this way 24 times of its 114 uses · Strong’s H5104Noun  ·  Translated: River 34, Euphrates 24, rivers 24, streams 6

    Genesis 31:21 So he fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead.

    Numbers 22:5 he sent messengers to summon Balaam son of Beor at Pethor, which is by the Euphrates in the land of his people. “Behold, a people has come out of Egypt,” said Balak. “They cover the face of the land and have settled next to me.

    Full study and all 108 verses →
  • פְּרָת PerâthEupharatestranslated this way 14 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s H6578Noun  ·  Translated: Euphrates 13, Perath 4, along the euphrates 1

    Genesis 2:14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

    Deuteronomy 1:7 Resume your journey and go to the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring peoples in the Arabah, in the hill country, in the foothills, in the Negev, and along the seacoast to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great River Euphrates.

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • נְהַר neharrivertranslated this way 12 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s H5103Noun  ·  Translated: Euphrates 12, river 1

    Ezra 4:10 and the rest of the peoples whom the great and honorable Ashurbanipal deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and elsewhere west of the Euphrates.

    Ezra 4:11 (This is the text of the letter they sent to him.) To King Artaxerxes, From your servants, the men west of the Euphrates:

    Full study and all 13 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Εὐφράτης Euphrátēsthe Euphratestranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G2166Noun  ·  Translated: Euphrates 2

    Revelation 9:14 saying to the sixth angel with the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”

    Revelation 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings of the East.

    Full study and all 2 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 euphrates: 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.