Word study

Heir

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: heir, heirs. 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 “heir” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָרַשׁ yârashtake possession of, inherit, dispossesstranslated this way 6 times of its 230 uses · Strong’s H3423Verb  ·  Translated: possess 72, drive 27, take possession 21, driven 12

    Genesis 15:3 Abram continued, “Behold, You have given me no offspring, so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

    2 Samuel 14:7 Now the whole clan has risen up against your maidservant and said, ‘Hand over the one who struck down his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of the brother whom he killed. Then we will cut off the heir as well!’ So they would extinguish my one remaining ember by not preserving my husband’s name or posterity on the earth.”

    Full study and all 204 verses →
  • זֶרַע zerasowing, seed, offspringtranslated this way 2 times of its 220 uses · Strong’s H2233Noun  ·  Translated: descendants 78, offspring 45, seed 34, children 10

    2 Kings 11:1 When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs.

    2 Chronicles 22:10 When Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she proceeded to annihilate all the royal heirs of the house of Judah.

    Full study and all 201 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κληρονόμος klēronómosan heir, inheritortranslated this way 14 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s G2818Noun  ·  Translated: heir 8, heirs 6, inherit 1

    Matthew 21:38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and take his inheritance.’

    Mark 12:7 But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’

    Full study and all 14 verses →
  • συγκληρονόμος synklēronómosa joint heir, participanttranslated this way 3 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G4789Adjective  ·  Translated: fellow heirs 2, co-heirs 1, heirs 1

    Romans 8:17 And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ — if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.

    Ephesians 3:6 This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus.

    Full study and all 4 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.

What the Bible says about heir: passages by topic →

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.