Word study
Image
5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: image, images. 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 “image” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- פֶּסֶל peselidol, imagetranslated this way 12 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s H6459Noun · Translated: idol 10, graven image 8, idols 6, carved image 3Full study and all 31 verses →
Leviticus 26:1 “You must not make idols for yourselves or set up a carved image or sacred pillar; you must not place a sculpted stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am the LORD your God.
Judges 17:3 And when he had returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I wholly dedicate the silver to the LORD for my son’s benefit, to make a graven image and a molten idol. Therefore I will now return it to you.”
- מַסֵּכָה massêkâhmolten metal, or imagetranslated this way 12 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H4541Noun · Translated: molten 5, molten idol 5, cast images 4, molten image 3Full study and all 28 verses →
Deuteronomy 9:12 And the LORD said to me, “Get up and go down from here at once, for your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten image.”
1 Kings 14:9 You have done more evil than all who came before you. You have proceeded to make for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke Me, and you have flung Me behind your back.
- צֶלֶם tselemimagetranslated this way 8 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s H6754Noun · Translated: idols 5, image 4, images 4, in his 1Full study and all 15 verses →
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.”
1 Samuel 6:5 Make images of your tumors and of the rats that are ravaging the land. Give glory to the God of Israel, and perhaps He will lift His hand from you and your gods and your land.
- פְּסִיל pesîlid.translated this way 8 times of its 23 uses · Strong’s H6456Noun · Translated: idols 13, carved images 4, images 3, carved idols 2Full study and all 23 verses →
Deuteronomy 7:25 You must burn up the images of their gods; do not covet the silver and gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it; for it is detestable to the LORD your God.
Isaiah 10:10 As my hand seized the idolatrous kingdoms whose images surpassed those of Jerusalem and Samaria,
- נֶסֶךְ nesekdrink-offeringtranslated this way 3 times of its 56 uses · Strong’s H5262Noun · Translated: drink offering 26, drink offerings 22, molten images 2Full study and all 54 verses →
Isaiah 41:29 See, they are all a delusion; their works amount to nothing; their images are as empty as the wind.’’
Jeremiah 10:14 Every man is senseless and devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols. For his molten images are a fraud, and there is no breath in them.
Greek words (New Testament)
- εἰκών eikṓnan image, likeness, busttranslated this way 19 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s G1504Noun · Translated: image 18, likeness 2, images 1, realities 1Full study and all 20 verses →
Matthew 22:20 “Whose image is this,” He asked, “and whose inscription?”
Mark 12:16 So they brought it, and He asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they answered.
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.
What the Bible says about image: 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.