Word study

Kingship

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מְלוּכָה melûkâhkingship, royaltytranslated this way 6 times of its 24 uses · Strong’s H4410Noun  ·  Translated: kingship 6, kingdom 6, royal 6

    1 Samuel 10:16 And Saul replied, “He assured us that the donkeys had been found.” But Saul did not tell his uncle what Samuel had said about the kingship.

    1 Kings 2:15 “You know that the kingship was mine,” he said. “All Israel expected that I should reign, but the kingship has turned to my brother, for it has come to him from the LORD.

    Full study and all 23 verses →
  • מֶלֶךְ melekkingtranslated this way 1 time of its 2,416 uses · Strong’s H4428Noun  ·  Translated: king 1,810, kings 267, king's 134, royal 58Full study and all 1,901 verses →
  • מַמְלָכָה mamlâkâhkingdom, sovereignty, dominion, reigntranslated this way 1 time of its 117 uses · Strong’s H4467Noun  ·  Translated: kingdom 51, kingdoms 42, royal 8, kings 2

    2 Chronicles 13:5 Do you not know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?

    Full study and all 113 verses →
  • מָלַךְ mâlakbe or become king, or queen, reigntranslated this way 1 time of its 340 uses · Strong’s H4427Verb  ·  Translated: reigned 132, became king 68, reign 36, king 32

    Ecclesiastes 4:14 For the youth has come from the prison to the kingship, though he was born poor in his own kingdom.

    Full study and all 283 verses →
  • מַלְכוּ malkûroyalty, reign, kingdomtranslated this way 1 time of its 54 uses · Strong’s H4437Noun  ·  Translated: kingdom 35, reign 4, sovereignty 3, royal 3

    Daniel 7:14 And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

    Full study and all 42 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • βασιλεία basileíakingship, sovereignty, authority, rule, kingdomtranslated this way 2 times of its 160 uses · Strong’s G932Noun  ·  Translated: kingdom 154, kingdoms 3, kingship 2, rules 1

    Luke 19:12 So He said, “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to lay claim to his kingship and then return.

    Luke 19:15 When he returned from procuring his kingship, he summoned the servants to whom he had given the money, to find out what each one had earned.

    Full study and all 154 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.