Word study

Repair

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: repairs, repaired, repair, repairing. 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 “repair” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָזַק châzaqbe or grow firm, strong, strengthentranslated this way 52 times of its 290 uses · Strong’s H2388Verb  ·  Translated: strong 37, made repairs 22, strengthened 16, repaired 15

    2 Kings 12:5 Let every priest receive it from his constituency, and let it be used to repair any damage found in the temple.”

    1 Chronicles 26:27 They had dedicated some of the plunder from their battles to the repair of the house of the LORD.

    Full study and all 264 verses →
  • רָפָא râphâhealtranslated this way 2 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H7495Verb  ·  Translated: heal 22, healed 16, heals 5, physicians 3

    1 Kings 18:30 Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people approached him, and he repaired the altar of the LORD that had been torn down.

    Jeremiah 19:11 and you are to proclaim to them that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: I will shatter this nation and this city, like one shatters a potter’s jar that can never again be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.

    Full study and all 61 verses →
  • אֲרוּכָה ărûkâhhealingtranslated this way 2 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H724Noun  ·  Translated: health 3, repair 2, healing 1

    2 Chronicles 24:13 So the workmen labored, and in their hands the repair work progressed. They restored the house of God according to its specifications, and they reinforced it.

    Nehemiah 4:7 When Sanballat and Tobiah, together with the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites, heard that the repair to the walls of Jerusalem was progressing and that the gaps were being closed, they were furious,

    Full study and all 6 verses →
  • גָּדַר gâdarwall up or off, build a walltranslated this way 2 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H1443Verb  ·  Translated: masons 2, repair 2

    Ezekiel 22:30 I searched for a man among them to repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, so that I should not destroy it. But I found no one.

    Amos 9:11 “In that day I will restore the fallen tent of David. I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old,

    Full study and all 10 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.