Word study

Host

1 Hebrew and 4 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • צָבָא tsâbâarmy, war, warfaretranslated this way 311 times of its 468 uses · Strong’s H6635Noun  ·  Translated: Hosts 286, army 66, host 23, divisions 21

    Deuteronomy 4:19 When you look to the heavens and see the sun and moon and stars— all the host of heaven— do not be enticed to bow down and worship what the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.

    1 Samuel 1:3 Year after year Elkanah would go up from his city to worship and sacrifice to the LORD of Hosts at Shiloh, where Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests to the LORD.

    Full study and all 448 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ποιέω poiéōI do, maketranslated this way 4 times of its 544 uses · Strong’s G4160Verb  ·  Translated: do 50, done 44, doing 40, made 34

    Luke 5:29 Then Levi hosted a great banquet for Jesus at his house. A large crowd of tax collectors was there, along with others who were eating with them.

    Luke 14:12 Then Jesus said to the man who had invited Him, “When you host a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or brothers or relatives or rich neighbors. Otherwise, they may invite you in return, and you will be repaid.

    Full study and all 494 verses →
  • στρατιά stratiáan army, host of angelstranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G4756Noun  ·  Translated: host 2

    Luke 2:13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a great multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying:

    Acts 7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • καλέω kaléōI call, invite, nametranslated this way 2 times of its 144 uses · Strong’s G2564Verb  ·  Translated: called 84, invited 13, call 11, calls 7

    Luke 14:9 Then the host who invited both of you will come and tell you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ And in humiliation, you will have to take the last place.

    Luke 14:10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the last place, so that your host will come and tell you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in front of everyone at the table with you.

    Full study and all 136 verses →
  • σαβαώθ sabaṓthhosts, armiestranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s G4519Noun  ·  Translated: Hosts 2

    Romans 9:29 It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

    James 5:4 Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

    Full study and all 2 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.