Word study

Followers

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “followers”. 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 “followers” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עֵדָה êdâhcongregationtranslated this way 8 times of its 145 uses · Strong’s H5712Noun  ·  Translated: congregation 112, assembly 15, followers 8, company 2

    Numbers 16:5 Then he said to Korah and all his followers, “Tomorrow morning the LORD will reveal who belongs to Him and who is holy, and He will bring that person near to Himself. The one He chooses He will bring near to Himself.

    Numbers 16:6 You, Korah, and all your followers are to do as follows: Take censers,

    Full study and all 137 verses →
  • אַחַר acharbehindtranslated this way 2 times of its 556 uses · Strong’s H310Preposition  ·  Translated: after 123, behind 56, and after 22, after that 19

    Nehemiah 11:8 and his followers Gabbai and Sallai — 928 men.

    Psalm 49:13 This is the fate of the foolish and their followers who endorse their sayings. Selah

    Full study and all 533 verses →
  • עַם ampeopletranslated this way 1 time of its 1,751 uses · Strong’s H5971Noun  ·  Translated: people 1,346, peoples 111, troops 89, nations 65Full study and all 1,601 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ὅσος hósoshow much, how great, how manytranslated this way 2 times of its 88 uses · Strong’s G3745Personal / Relative Pronoun  ·  Translated: whatever 13, all who 10, much 10, all 6

    Acts 5:36 Some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men joined him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing.

    Acts 5:37 After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and drew away people after him. He too perished, and all his followers were scattered.

    Full study and all 79 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.