Word study

Glean

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: glean, gleanings, gleaned, gleaning, gleans. 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 “glean” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • לָקַט lâqaṭpick or gather uptranslated this way 10 times of its 37 uses · Strong’s H3950Verb  ·  Translated: gather 14, gathered 8, glean 6, gleaned 3

    Ruth 2:2 And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go into the fields and glean heads of grain after someone in whose sight I may find favor.” “Go ahead, my daughter,” Naomi replied.

    Isaiah 17:5 as the reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the ears with his arm, as one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.

    Full study and all 34 verses →
  • עֹלֵלָה ôlêlâhgleanings, gleaning-timetranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H5955Noun  ·  Translated: gleanings 4, like a gleaning 1, gleaning 1

    Judges 8:2 But Gideon answered them, “Now what have I accomplished compared to you? Are not the gleanings of Ephraim better than the grape harvest of Abiezer?

    Isaiah 17:6 Yet gleanings will remain, like an olive tree that has been beaten— two or three berries atop the tree, four or five on its fruitful branches,” declares the LORD, the God of Israel.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • לֶקֶט leqeṭgleaningtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H3951Noun  ·  Translated: gleanings 2

    Leviticus 19:9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

    Leviticus 23:22 When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident. I am the LORD your God.’”

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • לָקַשׁ lâqashtake the aftermathtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H3953Verb  ·  Translated: glean 1

    Job 24:6 They gather fodder in the fields and glean the vineyards of the wicked.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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.