Word study

Exterminate

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שָׁמַד shâmadbe exterminated, destroyedtranslated this way 2 times of its 88 uses · Strong’s H8045Verb  ·  Translated: destroyed 37, destroy 25, destruction 5, wipe 3

    2 Samuel 21:5 And they answered the king, “As for the man who consumed us and plotted against us to exterminate us from existing within any border of Israel,

    Lamentations 3:66 You will pursue them in anger and exterminate them from under Your heavens, O LORD.

    Full study and all 86 verses →
  • כָּלָה kâlâhbe complete, at an end, finished, accomplished, spenttranslated this way 1 time of its 206 uses · Strong’s H3615Verb  ·  Translated: finished 54, fail 12, consumed 9, completed 7

    Deuteronomy 28:21 The LORD will make the plague cling to you until He has exterminated you from the land that you are entering to possess.

    Full study and all 200 verses →
  • אָבַד âbadperishtranslated this way 1 time of its 179 uses · Strong’s H6Verb  ·  Translated: perish 53, destroy 27, perished 15, destroyed 14

    Ezekiel 25:7 therefore I will indeed stretch out My hand against you and give you as plunder to the nations. I will cut you off from the peoples and exterminate you from the countries. I will destroy you, and you will know that I am the LORD.’

    Full study and all 173 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.