Word study

Explain

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָגַד nâgadbe conspicuoustranslated this way 16 times of its 360 uses · Strong’s H5046Verb  ·  Translated: tell 83, told 67, reported 31, declare 18

    Genesis 41:24 And the thin heads of grain swallowed the seven plump ones. I told this dream to the magicians, but no one could explain it to me.”

    Exodus 13:8 And on that day you are to explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’

    Full study and all 339 verses →
  • בִּין bîndiscerntranslated this way 3 times of its 166 uses · Strong’s H995Verb  ·  Translated: understand 27, discerning 16, understanding 12, consider 10

    Isaiah 28:9 Whom is He trying to teach? To whom is He explaining His message? To infants just weaned from milk? To babies removed from the breast?

    Daniel 8:16 And I heard the voice of a man calling from between the banks of the Ulai: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.”

    Full study and all 160 verses →
  • יְדַע yedaknowtranslated this way 2 times of its 44 uses · Strong’s H3046Verb  ·  Translated: know 6, made known 5, known 4, tell 4

    Daniel 2:15 “Why is the decree from the king so harsh?” he asked. Then Arioch explained the situation to Daniel.

    Daniel 2:17 Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah,

    Full study and all 39 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἐκτίθημι ektíthēmiI put out or expose a child, set forth, explaintranslated this way 2 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G1620Verb  ·  Translated: explained 2, set outside 1, expounded 1

    Acts 11:4 But Peter began and explained to them the whole sequence of events:

    Acts 18:26 And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

    Full study and all 4 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.