Word study

Length

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: length, lengths. 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 “length” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אֹרֶךְ ôreklengthtranslated this way 17 times of its 91 uses · Strong’s H753Noun  ·  Translated: long 62, length 17

    Genesis 13:17 Get up and walk around the land, through its length and breadth, for I will give it to you.”

    2 Chronicles 3:8 Then he made the Most Holy Place; its length corresponded to the width of the temple— twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. And he overlaid the inside with six hundred talents of fine gold.

    Full study and all 89 verses →
  • יוֹם yômdaytranslated this way 4 times of its 2,013 uses · Strong’s H3117Noun  ·  Translated: day 1,009, days 524, today 141, time 72Full study and all 1,744 verses →
  • מִדָּה middâhmeasure, measurement, stature, size, garmenttranslated this way 2 times of its 51 uses · Strong’s H4060Noun  ·  Translated: measurements 12, size 8, section 7, measuring 5

    Leviticus 19:35 You must not use dishonest measures of length, weight, or volume.

    Ezekiel 40:5 And I saw a wall surrounding the temple area. Now the length of the measuring rod in the man’s hand was six long cubits (each measuring a cubit and a handbreadth), and he measured the wall to be one rod thick and one rod high.

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • חֶבֶל chebelcord, territory, bandtranslated this way 2 times of its 60 uses · Strong’s H2256Noun  ·  Translated: cords 10, ropes 9, region 4, pain 3

    2 Samuel 8:2 David also defeated the Moabites, made them lie down on the ground, and measured them off with a cord. He measured off with two lengths those to be put to death, and with one length those to be spared. So the Moabites became subject to David and brought him tribute.

    Full study and all 58 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • μῆκος mēkoslengthtranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G3372Noun  ·  Translated: length 3

    Ephesians 3:18 will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth

    Revelation 21:16 The city lies foursquare, with its width the same as its length. And he measured the city with the rod, and all its dimensions were equal — 12,000 stadia in length and width and height.

    Full study and all 2 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.