Word study

Secure

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בָּטַח bâṭachtrusttranslated this way 7 times of its 120 uses · Strong’s H982Verb  ·  Translated: trust 51, trusts 15, trusted 11, trusting 6

    Job 11:18 You will be secure, because there is hope, and you will look around and lie down in safety.

    Psalm 22:9 Yet You brought me forth from the womb; You made me secure at my mother’s breast.

    Full study and all 117 verses →
  • בֶּטַח beṭachsecuritytranslated this way 2 times of its 39 uses · Strong’s H983Noun  ·  Translated: securely 21, safety 8, unsuspecting 2, secure 2

    Deuteronomy 33:12 Concerning Benjamin he said: “May the beloved of the LORD rest secure in Him; God shields him all day long, and upon His shoulders he rests.”

    Ezekiel 34:27 The trees of the field will give their fruit, and the land will yield its produce; My flock will be secure in their land. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bars of their yoke and delivered them from the hands that enslaved them.

    Full study and all 38 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἀσφαλίζω asphalízōI make safetranslated this way 2 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G805Verb  ·  Translated: secured 1, make 1, secured the tomb 1, fastened 1

    Matthew 27:64 So give the order that the tomb be secured until the third day. Otherwise, His disciples may come and steal Him away and tell the people He has risen from the dead. And this last deception would be worse than the first.”

    Matthew 27:66 So they went and secured the tomb by sealing the stone and posting the guard.

    Full study and all 4 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.