Word study
Mound
5 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: mound, mounds. 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 “mound” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- גַּל galheap, wave, billowtranslated this way 8 times of its 34 uses · Strong’s H1530Noun · Translated: waves 13, mound 8, heap of rubble 3, pile 2Full study and all 31 verses →
Genesis 31:46 and he said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and made a mound, and there by the mound they ate.
2 Samuel 18:17 They took Absalom, cast him into a large pit in the forest, and piled a huge mound of stones over him. Meanwhile, all the Israelites fled, each to his home.
- עָרֵם ârêmheap, sheaftranslated this way 3 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H6194Noun · Translated: heaps 3Full study and all 10 verses →
Nehemiah 4:2 before his associates and the army of Samaria, saying, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Can they restore the wall by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they complete it in a day? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble?”
Song of Solomon 7:2 Your navel is a rounded goblet; it never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by the lilies.
- גַב gabbacktranslated this way 3 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s H1354Noun · Translated: rims 3, defenses 2, mounds 2Full study and all 11 verses →
Ezekiel 16:24 you built yourself a mound and made yourself a lofty shrine in every public square.
Ezekiel 16:31 But when you built your mounds at the head of every street and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were not even like a prostitute, because you scorned payment.
- תֵּל têlmoundtranslated this way 2 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H8510Noun · Translated: mound of ruins 1, heap of ruins 1, mounds 1, ruins 1Full study and all 5 verses →
Deuteronomy 13:16 And you are to gather all its plunder in the middle of the public square, and completely burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. The city must remain a mound of ruins forever, never to be rebuilt.
Joshua 11:13 Yet Israel did not burn any of the cities built on their mounds, except Hazor, which Joshua burned.
- כֹּבֶד kôbedheavinesstranslated this way 1 time of its 4 uses · Strong’s H3514Noun · Translated: heavy 1, stress 1, dense 1, mounds 1Full study and all 4 verses →
Nahum 3:3 Charging horseman, flashing sword, shining spear; heaps of slain, mounds of corpses, dead bodies without end— they stumble over their dead—
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.