Word study
Five
1 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “five”. 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 “five” or one of its forms.
Compare the Greek words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- חָמֵשׁ châmêshfivetranslated this way 156 times of its 249 uses · Strong’s H2568Number · Translated: five 148, fifteenth 16, fifteen 14, 25 000 14Full study and all 192 verses →
Genesis 12:4 So Abram departed, as the LORD had directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.
Exodus 22:1 “If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters or sells it, he must repay five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.
Greek words (New Testament)
- πέντε péntefivetranslated this way 35 times of its 36 uses · Strong’s G4002Adjective · Translated: five 35, fifty thousand 1Full study and all 31 verses →
Matthew 14:17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.
Mark 6:38 “Go and see how many loaves you have,” He told them. And after checking, they said, “Five — and two fish.”
- πεντακισχίλιοι pentakischílioifive thousandtranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G4000Adjective · Translated: five thousand 6Full study and all 6 verses →
Matthew 14:21 About five thousand men were fed, besides women and children.
Mark 6:44 And there were five thousand men who had eaten the loaves.
- πεντακόσιοι pentakósioifive hundredtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G4001Adjective · Translated: five hundred 2Full study and all 2 verses →
Luke 7:41 “Two men were debtors to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.
1 Corinthians 15:6 After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
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.