Word study

Mire

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • טִיט ṭîṭmud, mire, claytranslated this way 2 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s H2916Noun  ·  Translated: like mud 3, mud 3, clay 3, mire 2

    Psalm 69:14 Rescue me from the mire and do not let me sink; deliver me from my foes and out of the deep waters.

    Zechariah 10:5 They will be like mighty men in battle, trampling the enemy in the mire of the streets. They will fight because the LORD is with them, and they will put the horsemen to shame.

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • רֶפֶשׁ repheshmiretranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H7516Noun  ·  Translated: mire 1

    Isaiah 57:20 But the wicked are like the storm-tossed sea, for it cannot be still, and its waves churn up mire and muck.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • בֹץ bôtsmiretranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H1206Noun  ·  Translated: mire 1

    Jeremiah 38:22 All the women who remain in the palace of the king of Judah will be brought out to the officials of the king of Babylon, and those women will say: ‘They misled you and overcame you — those trusted friends of yours. Your feet sank into the mire, and they deserted you.’

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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 mire: 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.