Word study

Naked

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עָרוֹם ârômnakedtranslated this way 16 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s H6174Adjective  ·  Translated: naked 15, lay naked 1

    Genesis 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.

    1 Samuel 19:24 Then Saul stripped off his robes and also prophesied before Samuel. And he collapsed and lay naked all that day and night. That is why it is said, “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

    Full study and all 15 verses →
  • עֵירֹם êrômnakedtranslated this way 7 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H5903Adjective  ·  Translated: naked 7, they 1, you 1, nakedness 1

    Genesis 3:10 “I heard Your voice in the garden,” he replied, “and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

    Ezekiel 16:7 I made you thrive like a plant of the field. You grew up and matured and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, but you were naked and bare.

    Full study and all 10 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • γυμνός gymnóswearing only the under-garment, baretranslated this way 10 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s G1131Adjective  ·  Translated: naked 10, uncovered 1, without clothes 1

    Matthew 25:36 I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’

    Mark 14:52 but he pulled free of the linen cloth and ran away naked.

    Full study and all 12 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.