Word study

Repent

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

In brief

In the New Testament, repent is the Greek metanoeō, a change of mind that turns a person around; the noun is metanoia. The Old Testament's usual picture is the Hebrew shuv, simply "turn" or "return," used of turning back to God. A different Hebrew word, naham, means to be sorry or to relent, and is sometimes used of God relenting from judgment.

Written and reviewed by our editorial team.

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שׁוּב shûbturn back, returntranslated this way 13 times of its 1,007 uses · Strong’s H7725Verb  ·  Translated: return 218, returned 105, restore 62, turn 56

    1 Kings 8:47 and when they come to their senses in the land to which they were taken, and they repent and plead with You in the land of their captors, saying, ‘We have sinned and done wrong; we have acted wickedly,’

    Full study and all 920 verses →
  • נָחַם nâchambe sorry, consoletranslated this way 3 times of its 106 uses · Strong’s H5162Verb  ·  Translated: comfort 24, relent 13, comforted 12, relented 7

    Job 42:6 Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.”

    Jeremiah 8:6 I have listened and heard; they do not speak what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, asking, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone has pursued his own course like a horse charging into battle.

    Full study and all 98 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • μετανοέω metanoéōI repent, change my mindtranslated this way 33 times of its 33 uses · Strong’s G3340Verb  ·  Translated: repent 24, repented 5, repents 3, still did not repent 1

    Matthew 3:2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

    Mark 1:15 “The time is fulfilled,” He said, “and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel!”

    Full study and all 32 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.