Word study

Sacrificial

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “sacrificial”. 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 “sacrificial” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מַאֲכֶלֶת maăkelethknifetranslated this way 1 time of its 4 uses · Strong’s H3979Noun  ·  Translated: knife 2, sacrificial knife 1, knives 1

    Genesis 22:6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. He himself carried the fire and the sacrificial knife, and the two of them walked on together.

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • כַּוָּן kavvâncake, sacrificial caketranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s H3561Noun  ·  Translated: cakes 1, sacrificial cakes 1

    Jeremiah 44:19 “Moreover,” said the women, “when we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands’ knowledge that we made sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?”

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • זֶבַח zebachsacrificetranslated this way 1 time of its 121 uses · Strong’s H2077Noun  ·  Translated: sacrifices 55, sacrifice 49, offerings 6, other sacrifices 5

    Ezekiel 39:17 And as for you, son of man, this is what the Lord GOD says: Call out to every kind of bird and to every beast of the field: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great feast on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.

    Full study and all 114 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • θυσία thysíaa sacrificetranslated this way 1 time of its 28 uses · Strong’s G2378Noun  ·  Translated: sacrifices 14, sacrifice 12, offerings 1, sacrificial 1

    Ephesians 5:2 and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God.

    Full study and all 28 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.