Word study

Offspring

5 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “offspring”. 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 “offspring” 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)

  • זֶרַע zerasowing, seed, offspringtranslated this way 45 times of its 220 uses · Strong’s H2233Noun  ·  Translated: descendants 78, offspring 45, seed 34, children 10

    Genesis 7:3 and seven pairs of every kind of bird of the air, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of all the earth.

    Leviticus 20:3 And I will set My face against that man and cut him off from his people, because by giving his offspring to Molech, he has defiled My sanctuary and profaned My holy name.

    Full study and all 201 verses →
  • צֶאֱצָא tseĕtsâissue, offspring, producetranslated this way 6 times of its 11 uses · Strong’s H6631Noun  ·  Translated: offspring 6, descendants 3, crops 1, springs 1

    Job 21:8 Their descendants are established around them, and their offspring before their eyes.

    Isaiah 42:5 This is what God the LORD says— He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath to the people on it and life to those who walk in it:

    Full study and all 11 verses →
  • פְּרִי perîfruittranslated this way 5 times of its 119 uses · Strong’s H6529Noun  ·  Translated: fruit 82, produce 11, offspring 5, fruitful 3

    Deuteronomy 28:4 The fruit of your womb will be blessed, as well as the produce of your land and the offspring of your livestock — the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.

    Lamentations 2:20 Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

    Full study and all 107 verses →
  • יָצָא yâtsâgo or come outtranslated this way 2 times of its 1,035 uses · Strong’s H3318Verb  ·  Translated: brought 108, went 103, go 82, came 78Full study and all 975 verses →
  • נִין nînoffspring, posteritytranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H5209Noun  ·  Translated: offspring 2, children 1

    Job 18:19 He has no offspring or posterity among his people, no survivor where he once lived.

    Isaiah 14:22 “I will rise up against them,” declares the LORD of Hosts. “I will cut off from Babylon her name and her remnant, her offspring and her posterity,” declares the LORD.

    Full study and all 3 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • σπέρμα spérmaseed, offspringtranslated this way 10 times of its 42 uses · Strong’s G4690Noun  ·  Translated: seed 10, offspring 10, descendants 10, children 5

    Matthew 22:24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses declared that if a man dies without having children, his brother is to marry the widow and raise up offspring for him.

    Mark 12:19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man is to marry his brother’s widow and raise up offspring for him.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • γένος génosoffspring, family, race, kindtranslated this way 3 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s G1085Noun  ·  Translated: people 3, offspring 3, family 2, native 2

    Acts 17:28 ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’

    Revelation 22:16 “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning Star.”

    Full study and all 16 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.