Word study

Levite

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • לֵוִיִּי LêvîîLevitetranslated this way 259 times of its 285 uses · Strong’s H3881Noun  ·  Translated: Levites 221, Levite 34, Levitical 14, Levi 7

    Exodus 4:14 Then the anger of the LORD burned against Moses, and He said, “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well, and he is now on his way to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.

    Leviticus 25:32 As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites always have the right to redeem their houses in the cities they possess.

    Full study and all 258 verses →
  • בֵּן bênsontranslated this way 12 times of its 4,587 uses · Strong’s H1121Noun  ·  Translated: son 1,843, sons 892, Israelites 422, descendants 358Full study and all 3,473 verses →
  • לֵוִי LêvîLevitranslated this way 4 times of its 48 uses · Strong’s H3878Noun  ·  Translated: Levi 42, Levites 3, Levite 1, Concerning Levi 1

    Exodus 2:1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,

    Numbers 4:2 “Take a census of the Kohathites among the Levites by their clans and families,

    Full study and all 46 verses →
  • לֵוִי LêvîLevitetranslated this way 4 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H3879Noun  ·  Translated: Levites 4

    Ezra 6:16 Then the people of Israel — the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the exiles — celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy.

    Ezra 6:18 They also appointed the priests by their divisions and the Levites by their groups to the service of God in Jerusalem, according to what is written in the Book of Moses.

    Full study and all 4 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • Λευΐτης Leuḯtēsa Levitetranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G3019Noun  ·  Translated: Levite 2, Levites 1

    Luke 10:32 So too, when a Levite came to that spot and saw him, he passed by on the other side.

    John 1:19 And this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?”

    Full study and all 3 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.