Word study

Fasten

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָתַן nâthangive, put, settranslated this way 11 times of its 1,957 uses · Strong’s H5414Verb  ·  Translated: give 326, gave 206, given 187, put 135

    Exodus 25:12 Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, two rings on one side and two on the other.

    Exodus 25:26 Make four gold rings for the table and fasten them to the four corners at its four legs.

    Full study and all 1,785 verses →
  • שׂוּם sûmput, place, settranslated this way 5 times of its 560 uses · Strong’s H7760Verb  ·  Translated: put 84, set 71, make 45, made 39

    Exodus 28:12 Fasten both stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. Aaron is to bear their names on his two shoulders as a memorial before the LORD.

    Judges 15:4 Then Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. And he took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and fastened a torch between each pair of tails.

    Full study and all 533 verses →
  • אָפַד âphadgird on ephodtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H640Verb  ·  Translated: Fasten 1, fastened 1

    Exodus 29:5 Take the garments and clothe Aaron with the tunic, the robe of the ephod, the ephod itself, and the breastplate. Fasten the ephod on him with its woven waistband.

    Leviticus 8:7 He put the tunic on Aaron, tied the sash around him, clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod on him. He tied the woven band of the ephod around him and fastened it to him.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • חָבַר châbarunitetranslated this way 2 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H2266Verb  ·  Translated: joined 6, join 4, attached 2, fastened 2

    Exodus 28:7 It shall have two shoulder pieces attached at two of its corners, so it can be fastened.

    Exodus 39:4 They made shoulder pieces for the ephod, which were attached at two of its corners, so it could be fastened.

    Full study and all 24 verses →
  • אָחַז âchazgrasp, take hold, take possessiontranslated this way 2 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H270Verb  ·  Translated: seized 9, seize 4, grip 3, took hold 3

    Nehemiah 7:3 And I told them, “Do not open the gates of Jerusalem until the sun is hot. While the guards are on duty, keep the doors shut and securely fastened. And appoint the residents of Jerusalem as guards, some at their posts and some at their own homes.”

    Esther 1:6 Hangings of white and blue linen were fastened with cords of fine white and purple material to silver rings on the marble pillars. Gold and silver couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl, and other costly stones.

    Full study and all 61 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.