Word study

Quantity

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רֹב rôbmultitude, abundance, greatnesstranslated this way 3 times of its 142 uses · Strong’s H7230Noun  ·  Translated: many 28, abundance 22, great 18, abundant 10

    1 Chronicles 22:3 David provided a large quantity of iron to make the nails for the doors of the gateways and for the fittings, together with more bronze than could be weighed

    2 Chronicles 9:9 Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones. There had never been such spices as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

    Full study and all 138 verses →
  • רָבָה râbâhbe, or become, much, many, greattranslated this way 1 time of its 219 uses · Strong’s H7235Verb  ·  Translated: multiply 39, multiplied 23, many 15, much 10

    1 Kings 10:10 Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones. Never again were spices in such abundance brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

    Full study and all 207 verses →
  • מְשׂוּרָה mesûrâhmeasuretranslated this way 1 time of its 4 uses · Strong’s H4884Noun  ·  Translated: measure 2, volume 1, measurements of quantity 1

    1 Chronicles 23:29 as well as for the rows of the showbread, the fine flour for the grain offering, the wafers of unleavened bread, the baking, the mixing, and all measurements of quantity and size.

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • תֹּכֶן tôkenmeasurementtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H8506Noun  ·  Translated: full quota 1, quantity 1

    Ezekiel 45:11 The ephah and the bath shall be the same quantity so that the bath will contain a tenth of a homer, and the ephah a tenth of a homer; the homer will be the standard measure for both.

    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.