Word study

Excuse

1 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

Greek words (New Testament)

  • παραιτέομαι paraitéomaiI make excuse, refuse, rejecttranslated this way 3 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s G3868Verb  ·  Translated: refuse 3, reject 3, excuse 2

    Luke 14:18 But one after another they all began to make excuses. The first one said, ‘I have bought a field, and I need to go see it. Please excuse me.’

    Luke 14:19 Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out. Please excuse me.’

    Full study and all 10 verses →
  • ἀναπολόγητος anapológētosindefensible, inexcusabletranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G379Adjective  ·  Translated: without excuse 1, excuse 1

    Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.

    Romans 2:1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • πρόφασις próphasisa pretext, an excusetranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s G4392Noun  ·  Translated: show 2, excuse 1, Pretending 1, false motives 1

    John 15:22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.

    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.