Word study
Seventh
2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “seventh”. 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 “seventh” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- שְׁבִיעִי shebîîseventhtranslated this way 96 times of its 98 uses · Strong’s H7637Number · Translated: seventh 93, unclean person on the seventh 1, fourth 1, seventh time 1Full study and all 94 verses →
Genesis 2:2 And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work.
Exodus 12:15 For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.
- שֶׁבַע shebaseventranslated this way 9 times of its 333 uses · Strong’s H7651Number · Translated: seven 257, seventh 9, seventeenth 6, seventeen 5Full study and all 297 verses →
Genesis 8:14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was fully dry.
Deuteronomy 15:9 Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought in your heart: “The seventh year, the year of release, is near,” so that you look upon your poor brother begrudgingly and give him nothing. He will cry out to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.
Greek words (New Testament)
- ἕβδομος hébdomosseventhtranslated this way 9 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s G1442Adjective · Translated: seventh 9Full study and all 8 verses →
John 4:52 So he inquired as to the hour when his son had recovered, and they told him, “The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.”
Hebrews 4:4 For somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in this manner: “And on the seventh day God rested from all His works.”
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.