Word study

Fresh

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חַי chayalive, livingtranslated this way 9 times of its 485 uses · Strong’s H2416Noun  ·  Translated: life 112, lives 62, living 59, live 53

    Genesis 26:19 Then Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found a well of fresh water there.

    Leviticus 14:5 Then the priest shall command that one of the birds be slaughtered over fresh water in a clay pot.

    Full study and all 441 verses →
  • לַח lachmoist, fresh, newtranslated this way 4 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H3892Adjective  ·  Translated: fresh 4, green 2

    Genesis 30:37 Jacob, however, took fresh branches of poplar, almond, and plane trees, and peeled the bark, exposing the white inner wood of the branches.

    Numbers 6:3 he is to abstain from wine and strong drink. He must not drink vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and he must not drink any grape juice or eat fresh grapes or raisins.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • רָפָא râphâhealtranslated this way 3 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H7495Verb  ·  Translated: heal 22, healed 16, heals 5, physicians 3

    Ezekiel 47:8 And he said to me, “This water flows out to the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah. When it empties into the Dead Sea, the water there becomes fresh.

    Ezekiel 47:9 Wherever the river flows, there will be swarms of living creatures and a great number of fish, because it flows there and makes the waters fresh; so wherever the river flows, everything will flourish.

    Full study and all 61 verses →
  • טָרִי ṭârîfreshtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H2961Adjective  ·  Translated: fresh 1, festering 1

    Judges 15:15 He found the fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and struck down a thousand men.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • דֶּשֶׁא deshegrasstranslated this way 1 time of its 14 uses · Strong’s H1877Noun  ·  Translated: vegetation 3, green shoots 2

    Job 6:5 Does a wild donkey bray over fresh grass, or an ox low over its fodder?

    Full study and all 14 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • γλυκύς glykýssweettranslated this way 2 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G1099Adjective  ·  Translated: fresh 2, sweet 2

    James 3:11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?

    James 3:12 My brothers, can a fig tree grow olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

    Full study and all 4 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.