Word study

Nurse

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָנַק yânaqsucktranslated this way 18 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s H3243Verb  ·  Translated: nurse 11, infant 4, infants 4, nursed 3

    Genesis 21:7 She added, “Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

    Exodus 2:7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

    Full study and all 30 verses →
  • אָמַן âmanconfirm, supporttranslated this way 3 times of its 104 uses · Strong’s H539Verb  ·  Translated: believe 24, faithful 14, trust 8, believed 7

    Numbers 11:12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth, so that You should tell me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries an infant,’ to the land that You swore to give their fathers?

    Ruth 4:16 And Naomi took the child, placed him on her lap, and became a nurse to him.

    Full study and all 98 verses →
  • עוּל ûlgive sucktranslated this way 2 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H5763Verb  ·  Translated: milk 2, nursing their young 1, ewes 1, nursing 1

    Genesis 33:13 But Jacob replied, “My lord knows that the children are frail, and I must care for sheep and cattle that are nursing their young. If they are driven hard for even a day, all the animals will die.

    Isaiah 40:11 He tends His flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart. He gently leads the nursing ewes.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • עוּל ûlsucking child, sucklingtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H5764Noun  ·  Translated: nursing child 1, nursing infant 1

    Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!

    Isaiah 65:20 No longer will a nursing infant live but a few days, or an old man fail to live out his years. For the youth will die at a hundred years, and he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.

    Full study and all 2 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

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 nurse: 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.