Word study

Gaze

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: gaze, gazed, gazing, gazes. 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 “gaze” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָאָה rââhseetranslated this way 4 times of its 1,266 uses · Strong’s H7200Verb  ·  Translated: see 354, saw 285, seen 124, look 45Full study and all 1,181 verses →
  • חָזָה châzâhsee, beholdtranslated this way 3 times of its 54 uses · Strong’s H2372Verb  ·  Translated: see 18, seen 6, saw 5, sees 3

    Psalm 27:4 One thing I have asked of the LORD; this is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and seek Him in His temple.

    Song of Solomon 6:13 Come back, come back, O Shulammite! Come back, come back, that we may gaze upon you. Why do you look at the Shulammite, as on the dance of Mahanaim?

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • נָבַט nâbaṭlooktranslated this way 2 times of its 68 uses · Strong’s H5027Verb  ·  Translated: look 24, looked 8, see 7, consider 6

    Psalm 102:19 For He looked down from the heights of His sanctuary; the LORD gazed out from heaven to earth

    Habakkuk 2:15 Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin until they are drunk, in order to gaze at their nakedness!

    Full study and all 66 verses →
  • שָׁגַח shâgachgazetranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7688Verb  ·  Translated: gazes 1, gazing 1, stare 1

    Psalm 33:14 From His dwelling place He gazes on all who inhabit the earth.

    Song of Solomon 2:9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice.

    Full study and all 3 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἀτενίζω atenízōI direct my gaze, look steadilytranslated this way 2 times of its 14 uses · Strong’s G816Verb  ·  Translated: looked intently 4, looked directly 3

    2 Corinthians 3:7 Now if the ministry of death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its fleeting glory,

    2 Corinthians 3:13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at the end of what was fading away.

    Full study and all 14 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.