Word study

Scale

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מֹאזֵן môzênbalances, scalestranslated this way 13 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H3976Noun  ·  Translated: scales 11, Weighed on the scale 1, balances 1, balance 1

    Leviticus 19:36 You shall maintain honest scales and weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

    Job 6:2 “If only my grief could be weighed and placed with my calamity on the scales.

    Full study and all 15 verses →
  • קַשְׂקֶשֶׂת qasqesethscaletranslated this way 7 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H7193Noun  ·  Translated: scales 6, mail 1, cling to your scales 1

    Leviticus 11:9 Of all the creatures that live in the water, whether in the seas or in the streams, you may eat anything with fins and scales.

    Deuteronomy 14:9 Of all the creatures that live in the water, you may eat anything with fins and scales,

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • דָּלַג dâlagleaptranslated this way 2 times of its 5 uses · Strong’s H1801Verb  ·  Translated: scale 2, leap 2, leaping 1

    2 Samuel 22:30 For in You I can charge an army; with my God I can scale a wall.

    Psalm 18:29 For in You I can charge an army, and with my God I can scale a wall.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • פֶּלֶס pelesbalance, scaletranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H6425Noun  ·  Translated: scales 1, scale 1

    Proverbs 16:11 Honest scales and balances are from the LORD; all the weights in the bag are His concern.

    Isaiah 40:12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills with a balance?

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • עָלָה âlâhgo up, ascend, climbtranslated this way 2 times of its 873 uses · Strong’s H5927Verb  ·  Translated: go 118, went 107, brought 56, come 42Full study and all 807 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.