Word study

Maul

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • טְרֵפָה ṭerêphâhanimal torntranslated this way 5 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H2966Noun  ·  Translated: mauled by wild beasts 3

    Exodus 22:31 You are to be My holy people. You must not eat the meat of a mauled animal found in the field; you are to throw it to the dogs.’’

    Leviticus 7:24 The fat of an animal found dead or mauled by wild beasts may be used for any other purpose, but you must not eat it.

    Full study and all 9 verses →
  • שָׁבַר shâbarbreak, break in piecestranslated this way 2 times of its 146 uses · Strong’s H7665Verb  ·  Translated: broken 32, shattered 23, break 21, broke 10

    1 Kings 13:26 When the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard this, he said, “It is the man of God who disobeyed the command of the LORD. Therefore the LORD has delivered him to the lion, and it has mauled him and killed him, according to the word that the LORD had spoken to him.”

    1 Kings 13:28 and he went and found the body lying in the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. The lion had not eaten the body or mauled the donkey.

    Full study and all 142 verses →
  • טָרַף ṭâraphtear, rend, plucktranslated this way 2 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H2963Verb  ·  Translated: torn to pieces 3, tear 3, tears 2, tearing 2

    Psalm 22:13 They open their jaws against me like lions that roar and maul.

    Nahum 2:12 The lion mauled enough for its cubs and strangled prey for the lioness. It filled its dens with the kill, and its lairs with mauled prey.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • בָּקַע bâqacleave, break open or throughtranslated this way 1 time of its 51 uses · Strong’s H1234Verb  ·  Translated: split 7, breached 4, divided 3, burst forth 2

    2 Kings 2:24 Then he turned around, looked at them, and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Suddenly two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.

    Full study and all 50 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • συντρίβω syntríbōI break by crushingtranslated this way 1 time of its 7 uses · Strong’s G4937Verb  ·  Translated: bruised 1, shattered 1, broke open 1, keeps mauling 1

    Luke 9:39 A spirit keeps seizing him, and he screams abruptly. It throws him into convulsions so that he foams at the mouth. It keeps mauling him and rarely departs from him.

    Full study and all 7 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 maul: 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.