Word study

Pitch

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָטָה nâṭâhstretch out, spread out, extend, incline, bendtranslated this way 12 times of its 215 uses · Strong’s H5186Verb  ·  Translated: incline 24, stretch 23, stretched 21, outstretched 19

    Genesis 12:8 From there Abram moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built an altar to the LORD, and he called on the name of the LORD.

    Exodus 33:7 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it at a distance outside the camp. He called it the Tent of Meeting, and anyone inquiring of the LORD would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.

    Full study and all 207 verses →
  • זֶפֶת zephethpitchtranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H2203Noun  ·  Translated: pitch 2, tar 1

    Exodus 2:3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got him a papyrus basket and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in the basket and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

    Isaiah 34:9 Edom’s streams will be turned to tar, and her soil to sulfur; her land will become a blazing pitch.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • אָהַל âhaltent, move tenttranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H167Verb  ·  Translated: pitched 1, moved his tent 1, pitch his tent 1

    Genesis 13:12 Abram lived in the land of Canaan, but Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom.

    Isaiah 13:20 She will never be inhabited or settled from generation to generation; no nomad will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flock there.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • תָּקַע tâqathrust, clap, give a blow, blasttranslated this way 2 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H8628Verb  ·  Translated: blew 15, blow 11, sound 7, sounded 4

    Genesis 31:25 Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the hill country of Gilead when Laban overtook him, and Laban and his relatives camped there as well.

    Jeremiah 6:3 Shepherds and their flocks will come against her; they will pitch their tents all around her, each tending his own portion:

    Full study and all 60 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 pitch: 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.