Word study

Sea

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָם yâmseatranslated this way 288 times of its 378 uses · Strong’s H3220Noun  ·  Translated: sea 254, west 51, seas 20, west side 7

    Genesis 1:10 God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of waters He called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

    Exodus 10:19 And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind that carried off the locusts and blew them into the Red Sea. Not a single locust remained anywhere in Egypt.

    Full study and all 327 verses →
  • מַיִם mayimwater, juice, urinetranslated this way 3 times of its 533 uses · Strong’s H4325Noun  ·  Translated: water 298, waters 176, like water 15, flood 3

    Psalm 18:15 The channels of the sea appeared, and the foundations of the world were exposed, at Your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.

    Psalm 74:13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You smashed the heads of the dragons of the sea;

    Full study and all 497 verses →
  • תְּהוֹם tehômdeep, sea, abysstranslated this way 2 times of its 36 uses · Strong’s H8415Noun  ·  Translated: deep 16, depths 9, watery depths 3, ocean depths 2

    Psalm 36:6 Your righteousness is like the highest mountains; Your judgments are like the deepest sea. O LORD, You preserve man and beast.

    Psalm 78:15 He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as abundant as the seas.

    Full study and all 35 verses →
  • תַּנִּין tannînserpent, dragon, sea-monstertranslated this way 2 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H8577Noun  ·  Translated: jackals 11, serpent 5, dragon 2, like a monster 2

    Genesis 1:21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.

    Psalm 148:7 Praise the LORD from the earth, all great sea creatures and ocean depths,

    Full study and all 28 verses →
  • יָם yâmseatranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H3221Noun  ·  Translated: sea 2

    Daniel 7:2 Daniel declared: “In my vision in the night I looked, and suddenly the four winds of heaven were churning up the great sea.

    Daniel 7:3 Then four great beasts came up out of the sea, each one different from the others:

    Full study and all 2 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • θάλασσα thálassathe sea, laketranslated this way 80 times of its 85 uses · Strong’s G2281Noun  ·  Translated: sea 80, of 4, seashore 1

    Matthew 4:18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

    Mark 1:16 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

    Full study and all 81 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.

What the Bible says about sea: passages by topic →

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.