Word study

Physician

1 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָפָא râphâhealtranslated this way 4 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H7495Verb  ·  Translated: heal 22, healed 16, heals 5, physicians 3

    Genesis 50:2 And Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So they embalmed him,

    2 Chronicles 16:12 In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his disease became increasingly severe. Yet even in his illness he did not seek the LORD, but only the physicians.

    Full study and all 61 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἰατρός iatrósa physiciantranslated this way 4 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s G2395Noun  ·  Translated: doctor 3, physicians 2, Physician 2

    Mark 5:26 She had borne much agony under the care of many physicians and had spent all she had, but to no avail. Instead, her condition had only grown worse.

    Luke 4:23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in Your hometown what we have heard that You did in Capernaum.’”

    Full study and all 7 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 physician: 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.