Word study

Plentiful

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָבָה râbâhbe, or become, much, many, greattranslated this way 2 times of its 219 uses · Strong’s H7235Verb  ·  Translated: multiply 39, multiplied 23, many 15, much 10

    Ezekiel 36:29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will summon the grain and make it plentiful, and I will not bring famine upon you.

    Ezekiel 36:30 I will also make the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field plentiful, so that you will no longer bear reproach among the nations on account of famine.

    Full study and all 207 verses →
  • שָׁמֵן shâmênfat, robusttranslated this way 1 time of its 10 uses · Strong’s H8082Adjective  ·  Translated: rich 3, fertile 3, robust 1, plentiful 1

    Isaiah 30:23 Then He will send rain for the seed that you have sown in the ground, and the food that comes from your land will be rich and plentiful. On that day your cattle will graze in open pastures.

    Full study and all 10 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • πολύς polýsmuch, many, oftentranslated this way 3 times of its 338 uses · Strong’s G4183Adjective  ·  Translated: many 172, great 37, large 32, much 31

    Matthew 9:37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

    Luke 10:2 And He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.

    Full study and all 307 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.