Word study

Purchase

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קָנָה qânâhget, acquiretranslated this way 12 times of its 82 uses · Strong’s H7069Verb  ·  Translated: buy 16, bought 13, purchased 7, acquire 6

    Genesis 33:19 And the plot of ground where he pitched his tent, he purchased from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of silver.

    Leviticus 25:14 If you make a sale to your neighbor or a purchase from him, you must not take advantage of each other.

    Full study and all 75 verses →
  • מִקְנָה miqnâhpurahasetranslated this way 11 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s H4736Noun  ·  Translated: purchased 6, purchase 5, possession 1, price 1

    Genesis 17:12 Generation after generation, every male must be circumcised when he is eight days old, including those born in your household and those purchased from a foreigner — even those who are not your offspring.

    Exodus 12:44 But any slave who has been purchased may eat of it, after you have circumcised him.

    Full study and all 13 verses →
  • לָקַח lâqachtaketranslated this way 2 times of its 938 uses · Strong’s H3947Verb  ·  Translated: take 247, took 245, taken 40, get 26Full study and all 890 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἀγοράζω agorázōI buytranslated this way 2 times of its 30 uses · Strong’s G59Verb  ·  Translated: buy 13, bought 9, buying 3, redeemed 2

    1 Corinthians 7:30 those who weep, as if they did not; those who are joyful, as if they were not; those who make a purchase, as if they had nothing;

    Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

    Full study and all 30 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.