Word study

Sack

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • אַמְתַּחַת amtachathsacktranslated this way 13 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H572Noun  ·  Translated: sack 7, sacks 6, bags 1, it 1

    Genesis 42:27 At the place where they lodged for the night, one of them opened his sack to get feed for his donkey, and he saw his silver in the mouth of the sack.

    Genesis 42:28 “My silver has been returned!” he said to his brothers. “It is here in my sack.” Their hearts sank, and trembling, they turned to one another and said, “What is this that God has done to us?”

    Full study and all 12 verses →
  • שַׂק saqsack, sackclothtranslated this way 5 times of its 47 uses · Strong’s H8242Noun  ·  Translated: sackcloth 41, sack 3, sacks 2, wearing sackcloth 1

    Genesis 42:25 Then Joseph gave orders to fill their bags with grain, to return each man’s silver to his sack, and to give them provisions for their journey. This order was carried out,

    Joshua 9:4 acted deceptively and set out as envoys, carrying on their donkeys worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended.

    Full study and all 45 verses →
  • צִקְלֹן tsiqlônsacktranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H6861Noun  ·  Translated: sack 1

    2 Kings 4:42 Now a man from Baal-shalishah came to the man of God with a sack of twenty loaves of barley bread from the first ripe grain. “Give it to the people to eat,” said Elisha.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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.