Word study
Quarry
5 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: quarry, quarries, quarried. 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 “quarry” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- נָסַע nâsapull out or up, set out, journeytranslated this way 2 times of its 146 uses · Strong’s H5265Verb · Translated: set 91, journeyed 4, moved 4, pulled 4Full study and all 139 verses →
1 Kings 5:17 And the king commanded them to quarry large, costly stones to lay the foundation of the temple with dressed stones.
Ecclesiastes 10:9 The one who quarries stones may be injured by them, and he who splits logs endangers himself.
- שְׁבָרִים ShebârîmShebarimtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H7671Noun · Translated: quarries 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Joshua 7:5 And the men of Ai struck down about thirty-six of them, chasing them from the gate as far as the quarries and striking them down on the slopes. So the hearts of the people melted and became like water.
- מַסָּע massâquarry or quarryingtranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H4551Noun · Translated: cut at the quarry 1, dart 1Full study and all 2 verses →
1 Kings 6:7 The temple was constructed using finished stones cut at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any other iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.
- מַקֶּבֶת maqqebethhammertranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H4718Noun · Translated: hammer 1, quarry 1Full study and all 2 verses →
Isaiah 51:1 “Listen to Me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut, and to the quarry from which you were hewn.
- פָּסַל pâsalhew, hew into shapetranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s H6458Verb · Translated: Chisel 2, chiseled 2, quarried the stone 1, carve 1Full study and all 6 verses →
1 Kings 5:18 So Solomon’s and Hiram’s builders, along with the Gebalites, quarried the stone and prepared the timber and stone for the construction of the temple.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.