Word study

Round

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: round, rounded, rounds. 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 “round” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • סָבַב sâbabturn about, go around, surroundtranslated this way 4 times of its 153 uses · Strong’s H5437Verb  ·  Translated: turned 16, surrounded 13, surround 10, turn 8

    Ecclesiastes 1:6 The wind blows southward, then turns northward; round and round it swirls, ever returning on its course.

    Song of Solomon 3:3 I encountered the watchmen on their rounds of the city: “Have you seen the one I love?”

    Full study and all 144 verses →
  • עָגֹל âgôlroundtranslated this way 3 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H5696Adjective  ·  Translated: circular in shape 2, round 2, circular 1, rounded 1

    1 Kings 7:31 The opening to each stand inside the crown at the top was one cubit deep, with a round opening like the design of a pedestal, a cubit and a half wide. And around its opening were engravings, but the panels of the stands were square, not round.

    1 Kings 10:19 The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. There were armrests on both sides of the seat, with a lion standing beside each armrest.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • בֶּטֶן beṭenbelly, body, wombtranslated this way 1 time of its 64 uses · Strong’s H990Noun  ·  Translated: womb 36, belly 8, stomach 3, within 3

    1 Kings 7:20 On the capitals of both pillars, just above the rounded projection next to the network, were the two hundred pomegranates in rows encircling each capital.

    Full study and all 64 verses →
  • סַהַר saharroundnesstranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H5469Noun  ·  Translated: rounded 1

    Song of Solomon 7:2 Your navel is a rounded goblet; it never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by the lilies.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • קָבַץ qâbatsgather, collecttranslated this way 1 time of its 126 uses · Strong’s H6908Verb  ·  Translated: gather 42, gathered 25, assembled 10, assemble 9

    Hosea 8:10 Though they hire allies among the nations, I will now round them up, and they will begin to diminish under the oppression of the king of princes.

    Full study and all 121 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.