Word study

Remnant

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “remnant”. 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 “remnant” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שְׁאֵרִית sheêrîthrest, residue, remnant, remaindertranslated this way 54 times of its 66 uses · Strong’s H7611Noun  ·  Translated: remnant 54, rest 8, survivors 2, posterity 1

    Genesis 45:7 God sent me before you to preserve you as a remnant on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

    2 Kings 19:4 Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to defy the living God, and He will rebuke him for the words that the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives.”

    Full study and all 66 verses →
  • שְׁאָר sheârremain, be left overtranslated this way 10 times of its 26 uses · Strong’s H7605Noun  ·  Translated: rest 11, remnant 10, remaining 2, other 1

    Isaiah 10:20 On that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no longer depend on him who struck them, but they will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel.

    Zephaniah 1:4 “I will stretch out My hand against Judah and against all who dwell in Jerusalem. I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal, the names of the idolatrous and pagan priests —

    Full study and all 25 verses →
  • יֶתֶר yetherremainder, excellence, excesstranslated this way 6 times of its 97 uses · Strong’s H3499Noun  ·  Translated: rest 64, remnant 6, bowstrings 3, left 3

    Deuteronomy 3:11 (For only Og king of Bashan had remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. His bed of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide, is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

    Joshua 12:4 And Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived in Ashtaroth and Edrei.

    Full study and all 93 verses →
  • פְּלֵיטָה pelêṭâhescapetranslated this way 6 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H6413Noun  ·  Translated: escape 6, survivors 6, remnant 6, deliverance 4

    2 Kings 19:30 And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above.

    Ezra 9:8 But now, for a brief moment, grace has come from the LORD our God to preserve for us a remnant and to give us a stake in His holy place. Even in our bondage, our God has given us new life and light to our eyes.

    Full study and all 28 verses →
  • שָׁאַר shâarremain, be left overtranslated this way 4 times of its 126 uses · Strong’s H7604Verb  ·  Translated: left 24, remained 19, remain 15, survive 8

    Numbers 21:35 So they struck down Og, along with his sons and his whole army, until no remnant was left. And they took possession of his land.

    Nehemiah 1:3 And they told me, “The remnant who survived the exile are there in the province, in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”

    Full study and all 118 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.