Word study

Relay

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • דָבַר dâbarspeaktranslated this way 13 times of its 1,113 uses · Strong’s H1696Verb  ·  Translated: speak 209, said 157, spoken 142, spoke 110

    Genesis 44:6 When the steward overtook them, he relayed these words to them.

    Exodus 4:30 and Aaron relayed everything the LORD had said to Moses. And Moses performed the signs before the people,

    Full study and all 1,025 verses →
  • נָגַד nâgadbe conspicuoustranslated this way 10 times of its 360 uses · Strong’s H5046Verb  ·  Translated: tell 83, told 67, reported 31, declare 18

    Genesis 27:42 When the words of her older son Esau were relayed to Rebekah, she sent for her younger son Jacob and told him, “Look, your brother Esau is consoling himself by plotting to kill you.

    Exodus 19:9 The LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I will come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear when I speak with you, and they will always put their trust in you.” And Moses relayed to the LORD what the people had said.

    Full study and all 339 verses →
  • סָפַר sâpharcounttranslated this way 2 times of its 154 uses · Strong’s H5608Verb  ·  Translated: scribe 41, count 19, told 15, declare 13

    1 Samuel 11:5 Just then Saul was returning from the field, behind his oxen. “What troubles the people?” asked Saul. “Why are they weeping?” And they relayed to him the words of the men from Jabesh.

    Psalm 78:3 that we have heard and known and our fathers have relayed to us.

    Full study and all 150 verses →
  • דָּבָר dâbârspeech, wordtranslated this way 2 times of its 1,244 uses · Strong’s H1697Noun  ·  Translated: word 342, words 299, acts 51, Chronicles 42

    1 Kings 2:30 And Benaiah entered the tent of the LORD and said to Joab, “The king says, ‘Come out!’” But Joab replied, “No, I will die here.” So Benaiah relayed the message to the king, saying, “This is how Joab answered me.”

    1 Kings 20:9 So Ahab answered the messengers of Ben-hadad, “Tell my lord the king, ‘All that you demanded of your servant the first time I will do, but this thing I cannot do.’” So the messengers departed and relayed the message to Ben-hadad.

    Full study and all 1,120 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.