Word study

Prison

2 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בַּיִת bayithhousetranslated this way 16 times of its 1,913 uses · Strong’s H1004Noun  ·  Translated: house 1,132, temple 176, palace 117, household 93

    Genesis 39:20 So Joseph’s master took him and had him thrown into the prison where the king’s prisoners were confined. While Joseph was there in the prison,

    Judges 16:21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze shackles and forced to grind grain in the prison.

    Full study and all 1,624 verses →
  • כֶּלֶא keleconfinement, restraint, imprisonmenttranslated this way 5 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H3608Noun  ·  Translated: prison 5

    2 Kings 17:4 But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had conspired to send envoys to King So of Egypt, and that he had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison.

    Isaiah 42:7 to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of the dungeon and those sitting in darkness out from the prison house.

    Full study and all 5 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • φυλακή phylakḗa watching, guard, prison, imprisonmenttranslated this way 28 times of its 43 uses · Strong’s G5438Noun  ·  Translated: prison 27, watch 3, jail 3, watch of the night 2

    Matthew 5:25 Reconcile quickly with your adversary, while you are still on the way to court. Otherwise, he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.

    Mark 6:27 So without delay, the king commanded that John’s head be brought in. He sent an executioner, who went and beheaded him in the prison.

    Full study and all 43 verses →
  • δέσμιος désmiosone bound, a prisonertranslated this way 3 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s G1198Noun  ·  Translated: prisoner 10, prison 3, prisoners 2, taken prisoner 1

    Acts 25:14 Since they were staying several days, Festus laid out Paul’s case before the king: “There is a certain man whom Felix left in prison.

    Hebrews 10:34 You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you yourselves had a better and permanent possession.

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • δεσμωτήριον desmōtḗriona prisontranslated this way 2 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G1201Noun  ·  Translated: prison 2, jail 2

    Matthew 11:2 Meanwhile John heard in prison about the works of Christ, and he sent his disciples

    Acts 16:26 Suddenly a strong earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. At once all the doors flew open and everyone’s chains came loose.

    Full study and all 4 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 prison: 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.