Word study

Latter

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אַחֲרִית achărîthafter-part, endtranslated this way 8 times of its 61 uses · Strong’s H319Noun  ·  Translated: end 21, future 6, latter 5, come 4

    Job 8:7 Though your beginnings were modest, your latter days will flourish.

    Jeremiah 48:47 Yet in the latter days I will restore Moab from captivity,” declares the LORD. Here ends the judgment on Moab.

    Full study and all 60 verses →
  • אֵלֶּה êl-lehthesetranslated this way 1 time of its 693 uses · Strong’s H428Pronoun  ·  Translated: these 377, things 36, of these 28, this 25

    Genesis 14:3 The latter five came as allies to the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea).

    Full study and all 655 verses →
  • אַחֲרִית achărîthendtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H320Noun  ·  Translated: latter 1

    Daniel 2:28 But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the latter days. Your dream and the visions that came into your mind as you lay on your bed were these:

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • אַחֲרוֹן achărôncoming aftertranslated this way 1 time of its 49 uses · Strong’s H314Adjective  ·  Translated: last 11, end 9, come 5, Western 4

    Haggai 2:9 The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former, says the LORD of Hosts. And in this place I will provide peace, declares the LORD of Hosts.”

    Full study and all 47 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • οὗτος hoûtosthis, he, she, ittranslated this way 1 time of its 1,042 uses · Strong’s G3778Demonstrative Pronoun  ·  Translated: this 534, these 121, things 105, he 31

    Matthew 23:23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

    Full study and all 976 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.