Word study

Scribe

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • סָפַר sâpharcounttranslated this way 45 times of its 154 uses · Strong’s H5608Verb  ·  Translated: scribe 41, count 19, told 15, declare 13

    2 Samuel 8:17 Zadok son of Ahitub and Ahimelech son of Abiathar were priests; Seraiah was the scribe;

    2 Kings 12:10 Whenever they saw that there was a large amount of money in the chest, the royal scribe and the high priest would go up, count the money brought into the house of the LORD, and tie it up in bags.

    Full study and all 150 verses →
  • סָפֵר sâphêrsecretary, scribetranslated this way 8 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H5613Noun  ·  Translated: scribe 6, scribes 2

    Ezra 4:8 Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe wrote the letter against Jerusalem to King Artaxerxes as follows:

    Esther 3:12 On the thirteenth day of the first month, the royal scribes were summoned and the order was written exactly as Haman commanded the royal satraps, the governors of each province, and the officials of each people, in the script of each province and the language of every people. It was written in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with the royal signet ring.

    Full study and all 8 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • γραμματεύς grammateúsa scribe, town-clerk, man of learningtranslated this way 61 times of its 63 uses · Strong’s G1122Noun  ·  Translated: scribes 58, scribe 3, teachers 1, city clerk 1

    Matthew 2:4 And when he had assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.

    Mark 1:22 The people were astonished at His teaching, because He taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

    Full study and all 63 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.