Word study
Graze
5 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: graze, grazing, grazes. 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 “graze” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- רָעָה rââhpasture, tend, grazetranslated this way 13 times of its 170 uses · Strong’s H7462Verb · Translated: shepherd 42, shepherds 39, feed 18, graze 8Full study and all 146 verses →
Genesis 41:2 when seven cows, sleek and well-fed, came up from the river and began to graze among the reeds.
Exodus 34:3 No one may go up with you; in fact, no one may be seen anywhere on the mountain — not even the flocks or herds may graze in front of the mountain.”
- בָּעַר bâarburn, consumetranslated this way 2 times of its 93 uses · Strong’s H1197Verb · Translated: purge 12, burn 10, burned 7, burning 6Full study and all 90 verses →
Exodus 22:5 If a man grazes his livestock in a field or vineyard and allows them to stray so that they graze in someone else’s field, he must make restitution from the best of his own field or vineyard.
- חֲלָק chălâqportion, possession, lottranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H2508Noun · Translated: graze 2, dominion 1Full study and all 3 verses →
Daniel 4:15 But leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven and graze with the beasts on the grass of the earth.
Daniel 4:23 And you, O king, saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying: ‘Cut down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump with its roots in the ground, with a band of iron and bronze around it, in the tender grass of the field. Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and graze with the beasts of the field till seven times pass him by.’
- נָוֶה nâvehabode of shepherd, or flockstranslated this way 2 times of its 37 uses · Strong’s H5116Noun · Translated: pasture 11, dwelling 3, dwelling place 2, home 2Full study and all 36 verses →
Ezekiel 34:14 I will feed them in good pasture, and the lofty mountains of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in a good grazing land; they will feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel.
- מִשְׁלוֹחַ mishlôachoutstretchingtranslated this way 1 time of its 10 uses · Strong’s H4916Noun · Translated: put 4, you do 2, sending 2, graze 1Full study and all 10 verses →
Isaiah 7:25 For fear of the briers and thorns, you will no longer traverse the hills once tilled by the hoe; they will become places for oxen to graze and sheep to trample.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.