Word study

Recede

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קָלַל qâlalbe slight, swift, triflingtranslated this way 2 times of its 82 uses · Strong’s H7043Verb  ·  Translated: curse 15, cursed 8, curses 5, swifter 5

    Genesis 8:8 Then Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had receded from the surface of the ground.

    Genesis 8:11 And behold, the dove returned to him in the evening with a freshly plucked olive leaf in her beak. So Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.

    Full study and all 79 verses →
  • שׁוּב shûbturn back, returntranslated this way 1 time of its 1,007 uses · Strong’s H7725Verb  ·  Translated: return 218, returned 105, restore 62, turn 56

    Genesis 8:3 The waters receded steadily from the earth, and after 150 days the waters had gone down.

    Full study and all 920 verses →
  • חָסֵר châsêrlack, need, be lacking, decreasetranslated this way 1 time of its 21 uses · Strong’s H2637Verb  ·  Translated: lack 4, lacked 3, run dry 2, lacks 2

    Genesis 8:5 And the waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • מָרַט mâraṭmake smooth, bare, bald; scour, polishtranslated this way 1 time of its 14 uses · Strong’s H4803Verb  ·  Translated: polished 5, smooth-skinned 2

    Leviticus 13:41 Or if his hairline recedes and he is bald on his forehead, he is still clean.

    Full study and all 13 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

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.