Word study

Prophesy

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: prophesy, prophesied, prophesying, prophesies. 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 “prophesy” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָבָא nâbâprophesytranslated this way 111 times of its 114 uses · Strong’s H5012Verb  ·  Translated: prophesy 50, prophesied 25, prophesying 22, prophesies 9

    Numbers 11:25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and He took some of the Spirit that was on Moses and placed that Spirit on the seventy elders. As the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied — but they never did so again.

    1 Samuel 10:5 After that you will come to Gibeah of God, where the Philistines have an outpost. As you approach the city, you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place, preceded by harps, tambourines, flutes, and lyres, and they will be prophesying.

    Full study and all 101 verses →
  • נָבִיא nâbîspokesman, speaker, prophettranslated this way 2 times of its 311 uses · Strong’s H5030Noun  ·  Translated: prophet 157, prophets 145, old prophet 2, prophesy 2

    1 Chronicles 25:1 Additionally, David and the commanders of the army set apart some of the sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun to prophesy with the accompaniment of lyres, harps, and cymbals. The following is the list of the men who performed this service:

    Full study and all 286 verses →
  • חָזָה châzâhsee, beholdtranslated this way 2 times of its 54 uses · Strong’s H2372Verb  ·  Translated: see 18, seen 6, saw 5, sees 3

    Isaiah 30:10 They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.

    Full study and all 50 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • προφητεύω prophēteúōI foretell, prophesytranslated this way 26 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s G4395Verb  ·  Translated: prophesy 12, prophesied 7, prophesies 5, prophesying 2

    Matthew 7:22 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’

    Mark 7:6 Jesus answered them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.

    Full study and all 27 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.