Word study

Integrity

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • תֹּם tômcompleteness, integritytranslated this way 15 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H8537Noun  ·  Translated: integrity 14, without taking special aim 2

    Genesis 20:5 Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I have done this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”

    1 Kings 9:4 And as for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, with a heart of integrity and uprightness, doing all I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and ordinances,

    Full study and all 22 verses →
  • תֻּמָּה tummâhintegritytranslated this way 5 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H8538Noun  ·  Translated: integrity 5

    Job 2:3 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one on earth like him, a man who is blameless and upright, who fears God and shuns evil. He still retains his integrity, even though you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.”

    Proverbs 11:3 The integrity of the upright guides them, but the perversity of the faithless destroys them.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • תָּמִים tâmîmcomplete, soundtranslated this way 5 times of its 91 uses · Strong’s H8549Adjective  ·  Translated: unblemished 39, blameless 16, without blemish 11, perfect 6

    Psalm 15:2 He who walks with integrity and practices righteousness, who speaks the truth from his heart,

    Proverbs 28:18 He who walks with integrity will be kept safe, but whoever is perverse in his ways will suddenly fall.

    Full study and all 85 verses →
  • אֱמוּנָה ĕmûnâhfirmness, steadfastness, fidelitytranslated this way 2 times of its 47 uses · Strong’s H530Noun  ·  Translated: faithfulness 22, faithfully 6, truth 6, faithful 3

    2 Kings 12:15 No accounting was required from the men who received the money to pay the workmen, because they acted with integrity.

    2 Kings 22:7 But they need not account for the money put into their hands, since they work with integrity.”

    Full study and all 47 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 integrity: 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.