Word study

Pole

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בַּד badseparationtranslated this way 34 times of its 163 uses · Strong’s H905Noun  ·  Translated: alone 43, poles 34, addition 26, only 12

    Exodus 25:13 And make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold.

    Numbers 4:6 They are to place over this a covering of fine leather, spread a solid blue cloth over it, and insert its poles.

    Full study and all 156 verses →
  • אֲשֵׁרָה ăshêrâhAsheratranslated this way 34 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H842Noun  ·  Translated: Asherah poles 21, Asherah pole 13, Asherah 4, Asherahs 2

    Exodus 34:13 Rather, you must tear down their altars, smash their sacred stones, and chop down their Asherah poles.

    Deuteronomy 7:5 Instead, this is what you are to do to them: tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire.

    Full study and all 40 verses →
  • נֵס nêsstandard, ensign, signal, signtranslated this way 2 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H5251Noun  ·  Translated: banner 13, pole 2, signal flag 2

    Numbers 21:8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and mount it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.”

    Numbers 21:9 So Moses made a bronze snake and mounted it on a pole. If anyone who was bitten looked at the bronze snake, he would live.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • מִפְלֶצֶת miphletsethhorrid thingtranslated this way 2 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H4656Noun  ·  Translated: detestable 2, pole 2

    1 Kings 15:13 He also removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made a detestable Asherah pole. Asa chopped down the pole and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

    2 Chronicles 15:16 King Asa also removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made a detestable Asherah pole. Asa chopped down the pole, crushed it, and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

    Full study and all 2 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.