Word study

Mortal

3 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אֱנוֹשׁ ĕnôshman, mankindtranslated this way 3 times of its 470 uses · Strong’s H582Noun  ·  Translated: men 368, man 25, people 5, husbands 4

    2 Chronicles 14:11 Then Asa cried out to the LORD his God: “O LORD, there is no one besides You to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our God, for we rely on You, and in Your name we have come against this multitude. O LORD, You are our God. Do not let a mere mortal prevail against You.”

    Job 4:17 ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?

    Full study and all 447 verses →
  • אָדָם âdâmman, mankindtranslated this way 3 times of its 509 uses · Strong’s H120Noun  ·  Translated: man 311, men 75, mankind 21, human 18

    Psalm 82:7 But like mortals you will die, and like rulers you will fall.”

    Isaiah 31:8 “Then Assyria will fall, but not by the sword of man; a sword will devour them, but not one made by mortals. They will flee before the sword, and their young men will be put to forced labor.

    Full study and all 489 verses →
  • בֵּן bênsontranslated this way 2 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 →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • θνητός thnētósmortaltranslated this way 5 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G2349Adjective  ·  Translated: mortal 5, mortality 1

    Romans 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.

    1 Corinthians 15:53 For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • θάνατος thánatosdeathtranslated this way 2 times of its 114 uses · Strong’s G2288Noun  ·  Translated: death 104, death sentence 2, died 2, mortal 2

    Revelation 13:3 One of the heads of the beast appeared to have been mortally wounded. But the mortal wound was healed, and the whole world marveled and followed the beast.

    Revelation 13:12 And this beast exercised all the authority of the first beast and caused the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed.

    Full study and all 103 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.