Word study

Overcame

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מָצָא mâtsâattain to, findtranslated this way 1 time of its 436 uses · Strong’s H4672Verb  ·  Translated: found 197, find 87, finds 13, present 7

    Psalm 116:3 The ropes of death entangled me; the anguish of Sheol overcame me; I was confronted by trouble and sorrow.

    Full study and all 411 verses →
  • יָכֹל yâkôlbe able, have power, prevail, enduretranslated this way 1 time of its 116 uses · Strong’s H3201Verb  ·  Translated: able 17, could 11, prevail 10, can 9

    Jeremiah 38:22 All the women who remain in the palace of the king of Judah will be brought out to the officials of the king of Babylon, and those women will say: ‘They misled you and overcame you — those trusted friends of yours. Your feet sank into the mire, and they deserted you.’

    Full study and all 113 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • νικάω nikáōI conquer, overcometranslated this way 1 time of its 28 uses · Strong’s G3528Verb  ·  Translated: overcomes 10, overcome 8, conquer 2, conquered 2

    Revelation 3:21 To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

    Full study and all 24 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.