Word study

Record

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • כָּתַב kâthabwritetranslated this way 18 times of its 219 uses · Strong’s H3789Verb  ·  Translated: written 104, write 29, wrote 21, recorded 16

    Numbers 33:2 At the LORD’s command, Moses recorded the stages of their journey. These are the stages listed by their starting points:

    Deuteronomy 28:61 The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.

    Full study and all 210 verses →
  • תּוֹלְדָה tôledâhdescent, family, historytranslated this way 14 times of its 39 uses · Strong’s H8435Noun  ·  Translated: according to the records 12, account 11, genealogies 3, generations 2

    Exodus 6:16 These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.

    Numbers 1:20 From the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, according to the records of their clans and families, counting one by one the names of every male twenty years of age or older who could serve in the army,

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • יָחַשׂ yâchasenrolltranslated this way 7 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s H3187Verb  ·  Translated: recorded 2, recorded in the genealogies 2, listed in their genealogies 2, registered by genealogy 2

    1 Chronicles 4:33 and all their surrounding villages as far as Baal. These were their settlements, and they kept a genealogical record:

    Ezra 8:1 These are the family heads and genealogical records of those who returned with me from Babylon during the reign of King Artaxerxes:

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • דָּבָר dâbârspeech, wordtranslated this way 4 times of its 1,244 uses · Strong’s H1697Noun  ·  Translated: word 342, words 299, acts 51, Chronicles 42Full study and all 1,120 verses →
  • כָּתָב kâthâbwritingtranslated this way 2 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H3791Noun  ·  Translated: script 3, family records 2, text 2

    Ezra 2:62 These men searched for their family records, but they could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.

    Nehemiah 7:64 These men searched for their family records, but they could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.

    Full study and all 15 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.