Word study

Jacob

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יַעֲקֹב YaăqôbJacobtranslated this way 332 times of its 344 uses · Strong’s H3290Noun  ·  Translated: Jacob 308, Jacob's 18

    Genesis 25:26 After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. And Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.

    Exodus 1:1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family:

    Full study and all 314 verses →
  • אָמַר âmarutter, saytranslated this way 10 times of its 4,555 uses · Strong’s H559Verb  ·  Translated: said 1,531, says 576, say 352, replied 341

    Genesis 29:5 “Do you know Laban the grandson of Nahor?” Jacob asked. “We know him,” they replied.

    Genesis 29:6 “Is he well?” Jacob inquired. “Yes,” they answered, “and here comes his daughter Rachel with his sheep.”

    Full study and all 3,827 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Ἰακώβ IakṓbJacobtranslated this way 27 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s G2384Noun  ·  Translated: Jacob 26, Jacob's 1

    Matthew 1:2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.

    Mark 12:26 But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

    Full study and all 25 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 Jacob: 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.