Word study

River

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נָהָר nâhârstream, rivertranslated this way 65 times of its 114 uses · Strong’s H5104Noun  ·  Translated: River 34, Euphrates 24, rivers 24, streams 6

    Genesis 2:10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it branched into four headwaters:

    Exodus 7:19 And the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt— over their rivers and canals and ponds and all the reservoirs— that they may become blood.’ There will be blood throughout the land of Egypt, even in the vessels of wood and stone.”

    Full study and all 108 verses →
  • נַחַל nachaltorrent, torrent-valley, wadytranslated this way 20 times of its 138 uses · Strong’s H5158Noun  ·  Translated: Valley 49, Brook 26, river 17, streams 8

    Deuteronomy 2:37 But you did not go near the land of the Ammonites, or the land along the banks of the Jabbok River, or the cities of the hill country, or any place that the LORD our God had forbidden.

    Joshua 12:2 Sihon king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon. He ruled from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Valley, along the middle of the valley, up to the Jabbok River (the border of the Ammonites), that is, half of Gilead,

    Full study and all 123 verses →
  • יְאֹר yeôrstreamtranslated this way 15 times of its 62 uses · Strong’s H2975Noun  ·  Translated: Nile 26, river 10, streams 8, like the nile 6

    Genesis 41:2 when seven cows, sleek and well-fed, came up from the river and began to graze among the reeds.

    Exodus 7:18 The fish in the Nile will die, the river will stink, and the Egyptians will be unable to drink its water.’”

    Full study and all 48 verses →
  • מַיִם mayimwater, juice, urinetranslated this way 2 times of its 533 uses · Strong’s H4325Noun  ·  Translated: water 298, waters 176, like water 15, flood 3

    2 Samuel 17:21 After the men had gone, Ahimaaz and Jonathan climbed up out of the well and went to inform King David, saying, “Get up and cross over the river at once, for Ahithophel has given this advice against you.”

    Full study and all 497 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ποταμός potamósa river, torrenttranslated this way 12 times of its 17 uses · Strong’s G4215Noun  ·  Translated: river 9, rivers 3, torrents 2, torrent 2

    Matthew 3:6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

    Mark 1:5 People went out to him from all of Jerusalem and the countryside of Judea. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

    Full study and all 17 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.

What the Bible says about River: passages by topic →

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.