Word study

Posterity

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נֶכֶד nekedprogeny, posteritytranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H5220Noun  ·  Translated: posterity 2, descendants 1

    Job 18:19 He has no offspring or posterity among his people, no survivor where he once lived.

    Isaiah 14:22 “I will rise up against them,” declares the LORD of Hosts. “I will cut off from Babylon her name and her remnant, her offspring and her posterity,” declares the LORD.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • אַחֲרִית achărîthafter-part, endtranslated this way 2 times of its 61 uses · Strong’s H319Noun  ·  Translated: end 21, future 6, latter 5, come 4

    Psalm 37:37 Consider the blameless and observe the upright, for posterity awaits the man of peace.

    Amos 4:2 The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness: “Behold, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

    Full study and all 60 verses →
  • שְׁאֵרִית sheêrîthrest, residue, remnant, remaindertranslated this way 1 time of its 66 uses · Strong’s H7611Noun  ·  Translated: remnant 54, rest 8, survivors 2, posterity 1

    2 Samuel 14:7 Now the whole clan has risen up against your maidservant and said, ‘Hand over the one who struck down his brother, that we may put him to death for the life of the brother whom he killed. Then we will cut off the heir as well!’ So they would extinguish my one remaining ember by not preserving my husband’s name or posterity on the earth.”

    Full study and all 66 verses →
  • זֶרַע zerasowing, seed, offspringtranslated this way 1 time of its 220 uses · Strong’s H2233Noun  ·  Translated: descendants 78, offspring 45, seed 34, children 10Full study and all 201 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.