Word study

Overtake

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָשַׂג nâsagreach, overtaketranslated this way 17 times of its 47 uses · Strong’s H5381Verb  ·  Translated: overtake 16, overtook 6, afford 6, prospers 3

    Genesis 44:4 They had not gone far from the city when Joseph told his steward, “Pursue the men at once, and when you overtake them, ask, ‘Why have you repaid good with evil?

    Exodus 15:9 The enemy declared, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword; my hand will destroy them.’

    Full study and all 45 verses →
  • בּוֹא bôcome in, come, go in, gotranslated this way 3 times of its 2,442 uses · Strong’s H935Verb  ·  Translated: come 358, came 298, bring 209, brought 201Full study and all 2,217 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • καταλαμβάνω katalambánōI seize tight hold of, overtake, comprehendtranslated this way 2 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s G2638Verb  ·  Translated: caught 2, overtake 2

    John 12:35 Then Jesus told them, “For a little while longer, the Light will be among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.

    1 Thessalonians 5:4 But you, brothers, are not in the darkness so that this day should overtake you like a thief.

    Full study and all 14 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.