Word study
Reaper
2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “reaper”. 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 “reaper” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- קָצַר qâtsarbe shorttranslated this way 3 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H7114Verb · Translated: reap 14, harvesters 6, short 4, harvesting 3Full study and all 45 verses →
Psalm 129:7 unable to fill the hands of the reaper, or the arms of the binder of sheaves.
Jeremiah 9:22 Declare that this is what the LORD says: “The corpses of men will fall like dung upon the open field, like newly cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather it.”
- קָצִיר qâtsîrharvesting, harvesttranslated this way 1 time of its 51 uses · Strong’s H7105Noun · Translated: harvest 39, harvest time 3, branches 3, harvesting 2Full study and all 47 verses →
Isaiah 17:5 as the reaper gathers the standing grain and harvests the ears with his arm, as one gleans heads of grain in the Valley of Rephaim.
Greek words (New Testament)
- θερίζω therízōI reap, gathertranslated this way 2 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s G2325Verb · Translated: reap 11, reaping 2, reaper 2Full study and all 17 verses →
John 4:36 Already the reaper draws his wages and gathers a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.
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.