Word study

Perfume

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שֶׁמֶן shemenfat, oiltranslated this way 4 times of its 191 uses · Strong’s H8081Noun  ·  Translated: oil 144, olive oil 22, olive 4, perfume 3

    Ecclesiastes 7:1 A good name is better than fine perfume, and one’s day of death is better than his day of birth.

    Song of Solomon 1:3 The fragrance of your perfume is pleasing; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the maidens adore you.

    Full study and all 175 verses →
  • רָקַח râqachmixtranslated this way 2 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H7543Verb  ·  Translated: perfumer 2

    Exodus 30:33 Anyone who mixes perfume like it or puts it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people.’”

    2 Chronicles 16:14 And he was buried in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier that was full of spices and various blended perfumes; then they made a great fire in his honor.

    Full study and all 8 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • μύρον mýronanointing-oil, ointmenttranslated this way 12 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s G3464Noun  ·  Translated: perfume 11, perfumes 1, myrrh 1

    Matthew 26:7 a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, which she poured on His head as He reclined at the table.

    Mark 14:3 While Jesus was in Bethany reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke open the jar and poured it on Jesus’ head.

    Full study and all 12 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.

What the Bible says about perfume: 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.