Word study
Evildoer
4 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: evildoers, evildoer. 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 “evildoer” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- פָּעַל pâaldo, maketranslated this way 9 times of its 57 uses · Strong’s H6466Verb · Translated: workers 12, evildoers 8, done 6, do 3Full study and all 56 verses →
Job 34:8 He keeps company with evildoers and walks with wicked men.
Psalm 36:12 There the evildoers lie fallen, thrown down and unable to rise.
- רָעַע râabe evil, badtranslated this way 8 times of its 97 uses · Strong’s H7489Verb · Translated: wicked 9, harm 8, evil 8, evildoers 8Full study and all 97 verses →
Job 8:20 Behold, God does not reject the blameless, nor will He strengthen the hand of evildoers.
Psalm 26:5 I hate the mob of evildoers, and refuse to sit with the wicked.
- עָשָׂה âsâhdo, maketranslated this way 3 times of its 2,478 uses · Strong’s H6213Verb · Translated: done 292, made 265, make 143, did 112Full study and all 2,206 verses →
- רַע rabad, eviltranslated this way 2 times of its 651 uses · Strong’s H7451Adjective · Translated: evil 263, disaster 72, harm 38, wicked 31Full study and all 615 verses →
Psalm 10:15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call him to account for his wickedness until none is left to be found.
Proverbs 4:14 Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.