Word study

Maiden

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בְּתוּלָה bethûlâhvirgintranslated this way 9 times of its 50 uses · Strong’s H1330Noun  ·  Translated: virgin 26, maidens 7, young women 5, virgins 3

    Psalm 78:63 Fire consumed His young men, and their maidens were left without wedding songs.

    Jeremiah 2:32 Does a maiden forget her jewelry or a bride her wedding sash? Yet My people have forgotten Me for days without number.

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • עַלְמָה almâhyoung womantranslated this way 5 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H5959Noun  ·  Translated: maidens 3, maiden 2, girl 1, virgin 1

    Genesis 24:43 Here I am, standing beside this spring. Now if a maiden comes out to draw water and I say to her, ‘Please let me drink a little water from your jar,’

    Psalm 68:25 The singers lead the way, the musicians follow after, among the maidens playing tambourines.

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • נַעֲרָה naărâhgirl, damseltranslated this way 4 times of its 56 uses · Strong’s H5291Noun  ·  Translated: girl 11, young woman 8, girl's 5, servant girls 4

    1 Samuel 25:42 So Abigail hurried and got on a donkey, and attended by five of her maidens, she followed David’s messengers and became his wife.

    Esther 4:4 When Esther’s maidens and eunuchs came and told her about Mordecai, the queen was overcome with distress. She sent clothes for Mordecai to wear instead of his sackcloth, but he would not accept them.

    Full study and all 52 verses →
  • בַּת bathdaughtertranslated this way 2 times of its 551 uses · Strong’s H1323Noun  ·  Translated: daughter 255, daughters 218, villages 19, towns 6

    Song of Solomon 2:2 Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among the maidens.

    Song of Solomon 6:9 but my dove, my perfect one, is unique, the favorite of the mother who bore her. The maidens see her and call her blessed; the queens and concubines sing her praises.

    Full study and all 486 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.

What the Bible says about maiden: passages by topic →

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.