Word study

Grace

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

In brief

Grace translates the Greek charis: favor, kindness, a gift freely given. The same word can mean thanks, the fitting answer to a gift. Behind it in the Old Testament stands the Hebrew hen, "favor," as in finding favor in someone's eyes, and the verb hanan, to be gracious. In the New Testament letters, charis is above all the favor God shows in Christ.

Written and reviewed by our editorial team.

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חֵן chênfavour, gracetranslated this way 9 times of its 66 uses · Strong’s H2580Noun  ·  Translated: favor 48, grace 9, gracious 3, charm 2

    Esther 2:17 And the king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she found grace and favor in his sight more than all of the other virgins. So he placed the royal crown upon her head and made her queen in place of Vashti.

    Psalm 45:2 You are the most handsome of men; grace has anointed your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever.

    Full study and all 64 verses →
  • חָנַן chânanshew favour, be gracioustranslated this way 2 times of its 76 uses · Strong’s H2603Verb  ·  Translated: gracious 17, mercy 14, merciful 7, favor 4

    Psalm 4:1 For the choirmaster. With stringed instruments. A Psalm of David. Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness! You have relieved my distress; show me grace and hear my prayer.

    Isaiah 26:10 Though grace is shown to the wicked man, he does not learn righteousness. In the land of righteousness he acts unjustly and fails to see the majesty of the LORD.

    Full study and all 72 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • χάρις chárisgrace, favor, kindnesstranslated this way 121 times of its 153 uses · Strong’s G5485Noun  ·  Translated: grace 120, thanks 6, favor 5, credit 3

    Luke 2:40 And the Child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.

    John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

    Full study and all 145 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.