Word study

Severe

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • כָּבֵד kâbêdheavytranslated this way 7 times of its 40 uses · Strong’s H3515Adjective  ·  Translated: heavy 7, severe 6, large 4, great 4

    Genesis 12:10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

    Exodus 9:3 then the hand of the LORD will bring a severe plague on your livestock in the field— on your horses, donkeys, camels, herds, and flocks.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • חָזַק châzaqbe or grow firm, strong, strengthentranslated this way 5 times of its 290 uses · Strong’s H2388Verb  ·  Translated: strong 37, made repairs 22, strengthened 16, repaired 15

    Genesis 41:56 When the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened up all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians; for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt.

    2 Kings 25:3 By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.

    Full study and all 264 verses →
  • גָּדוֹל gâdôlgreattranslated this way 3 times of its 501 uses · Strong’s H1419Adjective  ·  Translated: great 262, large 33, high 20, loud 14

    Genesis 12:17 The LORD, however, afflicted Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife Sarai.

    Deuteronomy 28:59 He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses.

    Full study and all 477 verses →
  • רַב rabmuch, many, greattranslated this way 2 times of its 445 uses · Strong’s H7227Adjective  ·  Translated: many 171, great 65, captain 24, long 14

    Numbers 11:33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and the LORD struck them with a severe plague.

    Full study and all 426 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.