Word study

Forsaken

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עָזַב âzableave, forsake, loosetranslated this way 48 times of its 214 uses · Strong’s H5800Verb  ·  Translated: forsaken 47, forsake 36, leave 23, abandoned 22

    Judges 10:10 Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, saying, “We have sinned against You, for we have indeed forsaken our God and served the Baals.”

    1 Samuel 12:10 Then they cried out to the LORD and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have forsaken the LORD and served the Baals and Ashtoreths. Now deliver us from the hands of our enemies, that we may serve You.’

    Full study and all 206 verses →
  • נָטַשׁ nâṭashleave, forsake, permittranslated this way 4 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H5203Verb  ·  Translated: forsake 6, abandoned 5, spread 5, forsaken 4

    Judges 6:13 “Please, my Lord,” Gideon replied, “if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonders of which our fathers told us, saying, ‘Has not the LORD brought us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of Midian.”

    Isaiah 32:14 For the palace will be forsaken, the busy city abandoned. The hill and the watchtower will become caves forever — the delight of wild donkeys and a pasture for flocks —

    Full study and all 39 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἐγκαταλείπω enkataleípōI abandon, deserttranslated this way 3 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s G1459Verb  ·  Translated: forsaken 3, deserted 2

    Matthew 27:46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

    Mark 15:34 At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

    Full study and all 10 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.