Word study
Roast
6 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: roasted, roast, roasts. 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 “roast” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- קָלִי qâlîparched graintranslated this way 5 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H7039Noun · Translated: roasted grain 4, roasted 1Full study and all 5 verses →
Leviticus 23:14 You must not eat any bread or roasted or new grain until the very day you have brought this offering to your God. This is to be a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live.
Ruth 2:14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here; have some bread and dip it into the vinegar sauce.” So she sat down beside the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain, and she ate and was satisfied and had some left over.
- צָלִי tsâlîettranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H6748Noun · Translated: roasted 2, roast 1Full study and all 3 verses →
Exodus 12:8 They are to eat the meat that night, roasted over the fire, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
Isaiah 44:16 He burns half of it in the fire, and he roasts meat on that half. He eats the roast and is satisfied. Indeed, he warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
- קָלָה qâlâhroast, parchtranslated this way 3 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H7033Verb · Translated: roasted 2, roasted grain 1, burning pain 1Full study and all 4 verses →
Leviticus 2:14 If you bring a grain offering of firstfruits to the LORD, you shall offer crushed heads of new grain roasted on the fire.
Joshua 5:11 The day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate unleavened bread and roasted grain from the produce of the land.
- צָלָה tsâlâhroast fleshtranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H6740Verb · Translated: roast 1, roasts 1, roasted 1Full study and all 3 verses →
1 Samuel 2:15 Even before the fat was burned, the servant of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, “Give the priest some meat to roast, because he will not accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.”
Isaiah 44:16 He burns half of it in the fire, and he roasts meat on that half. He eats the roast and is satisfied. Indeed, he warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
- בָּשַׁל bâshalboil, seethetranslated this way 2 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s H1310Verb · Translated: cook 6, boiled 6, boil 5, cooked 3Full study and all 24 verses →
Deuteronomy 16:7 And you shall roast it and eat it in the place the LORD your God will choose, and in the morning you shall return to your tents.
2 Chronicles 35:13 They roasted the Passover animals on the fire according to the regulation, and they boiled the other holy offerings in pots, kettles, and bowls and quickly brought them to all the people.
- חָרַךְ chârakset in motion, starttranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H2760Verb · Translated: roast 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Proverbs 12:27 A lazy man does not roast his game, but a diligent man prizes his possession.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.