Word study

Noise

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קוֹל qôlsound, voicetranslated this way 8 times of its 425 uses · Strong’s H6963Noun  ·  Translated: voice 197, sound 63, voices 22, thunder 11

    1 Samuel 4:6 On hearing the noise of the shout, the Philistines asked, “What is this loud shouting in the camp of the Hebrews?” And when they realized that the ark of the LORD had entered the camp,

    1 Kings 1:45 Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king at Gihon, and they have gone up from there with rejoicing that rings out in the city. That is the noise you hear.

    Full study and all 378 verses →
  • רוּעַ rûaraise a shouttranslated this way 6 times of its 44 uses · Strong’s H7321Verb  ·  Translated: shout 10, Make a joyful noise 5, shout in triumph 4, shouted 3

    Ezra 3:13 The people could not distinguish the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people were making so much noise. And the sound was heard from afar.

    Psalm 66:1 For the choirmaster. A song. A Psalm. Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth!

    Full study and all 40 verses →
  • שָׁאוֹן shâônroartranslated this way 2 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s H7588Noun  ·  Translated: uproar 4, tumult 4, noise 2

    Isaiah 24:8 The joyful tambourines have ceased; the noise of revelers has stopped; the joyful harp is silent.

    Jeremiah 46:17 There they will cry out: ‘Pharaoh king of Egypt was all noise; he has let the appointed time pass him by.’

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • הָמוֹן hâmônsound, murmur, roar, crowd, abundancetranslated this way 1 time of its 81 uses · Strong’s H1995Noun  ·  Translated: multitude 12, army 10, multitudes 8, many 6

    Amos 5:23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

    Full study and all 77 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.