Word study

Lain

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָתַן nâthangive, put, settranslated this way 1 time of its 1,957 uses · Strong’s H5414Verb  ·  Translated: give 326, gave 206, given 187, put 135

    Numbers 5:20 But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority and have defiled yourself and lain carnally with a man other than your husband’—

    Full study and all 1,785 verses →
  • שָׁכַב shâkablie downtranslated this way 1 time of its 207 uses · Strong’s H7901Verb  ·  Translated: lie 46, rested 35, lies 25, lay 21

    1 Samuel 26:5 Then David set out and went to the place where Saul had camped. He saw the place where Saul and Abner son of Ner, the general of his army, had lain down. Saul was lying inside the inner circle of the camp, with the troops camped around him.

    Full study and all 190 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κεῖμαι keîmaiI lie, recline, am laidtranslated this way 1 time of its 23 uses · Strong’s G2749Verb  ·  Translated: lying 5, lies ready 2, appointed 2, laid 2

    John 20:12 and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and the other at the feet.

    Full study and all 23 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.