Word study

Recover

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָיָה châyâhlivetranslated this way 8 times of its 265 uses · Strong’s H2421Verb  ·  Translated: live 96, lived 24, was 17, revive 14

    2 Kings 1:2 Now Ahaziah had fallen through the lattice of his upper room in Samaria and injured himself. So he sent messengers and instructed them: “Go inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether I will recover from this injury.”

    2 Kings 8:8 So the king said to Hazael, “Take a gift in your hand, go to meet the man of God, and inquire of the LORD through him, ‘Will I recover from this illness?’”

    Full study and all 254 verses →
  • שׁוּב shûbturn back, returntranslated this way 6 times of its 1,007 uses · Strong’s H7725Verb  ·  Translated: return 218, returned 105, restore 62, turn 56Full study and all 920 verses →
  • רָפָא râphâhealtranslated this way 3 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H7495Verb  ·  Translated: heal 22, healed 16, heals 5, physicians 3

    2 Kings 8:29 So King Joram returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds that the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramah when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. Then Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to Jezreel to visit Joram son of Ahab, because Joram had been wounded.

    2 Chronicles 22:6 So he returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds they had inflicted on him at Ramah when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. Then Ahaziah son of Jehoram king of Judah went down to Jezreel to visit Joram son of Ahab, because Joram had been wounded.

    Full study and all 61 verses →
  • נָצַל nâtsalstrip, plundertranslated this way 2 times of its 205 uses · Strong’s H5337Verb  ·  Translated: deliver 75, delivered 34, rescue 30, rescued 9

    1 Samuel 30:18 So David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, including his two wives.

    1 Samuel 30:22 but all the wicked and worthless men among those who had gone with David said, “Because they did not go with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered, except for each man’s wife and children. They may take them and go.”

    Full study and all 191 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.