Word study

Heavy

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • כָּבַד kâbadbe heavy, weighty, burdensome, honouredtranslated this way 11 times of its 109 uses · Strong’s H3513Verb  ·  Translated: honor 19, honored 11, heavy 10, hardened 6

    1 Samuel 5:6 Now the hand of the LORD was heavy on the people of Ashdod and its vicinity, ravaging them and afflicting them with tumors.

    1 Kings 12:10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, “This is how you should answer these people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must make it lighter.’ This is what you should tell them: ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist!

    Full study and all 105 verses →
  • כָּבֵד kâbêdheavytranslated this way 9 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H3515Adjective  ·  Translated: heavy 7, severe 6, large 4, great 4

    Exodus 17:12 When Moses’ hands grew heavy, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Then Aaron and Hur held his hands up, one on each side, so that his hands remained steady until the sun went down.

    1 Samuel 4:18 As soon as the ark of God was mentioned, Eli fell backward from his chair by the city gate, and being old and heavy, he broke his neck and died. And Eli had judged Israel forty years.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • קָשָׁה qâshâhbe hard, severe, fiercetranslated this way 3 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H7185Verb  ·  Translated: stiffened 6, difficult 2, harden 2, stiffen 2

    1 Samuel 5:7 And when the men of Ashdod saw what was happening, they said, “The ark of the God of Israel must not stay here with us, because His hand is heavy upon us and upon our god Dagon.”

    1 Kings 12:4 “Your father put a heavy yoke on us. But now you must lighten the burden of your father’s service and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.”

    Full study and all 28 verses →
  • גָּדוֹל gâdôlgreattranslated this way 2 times of its 501 uses · Strong’s H1419Adjective  ·  Translated: great 262, large 33, high 20, loud 14

    Deuteronomy 25:13 You shall not have two differing weights in your bag, one heavy and one light.

    1 Kings 18:45 Meanwhile, the sky grew dark with clouds and wind, and a heavy rain began to fall. So Ahab rode away and went to Jezreel.

    Full study and all 477 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.