Word study
Shrivel
6 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: shrivel, shrivels, shriveled. 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 “shrivel” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- נָפַל nâphalfall, lietranslated this way 3 times of its 432 uses · Strong’s H5307Verb · Translated: fall 104, fell 77, fallen 54, falls 21Full study and all 403 verses →
Numbers 5:21 and the priest shall have the woman swear under the oath of the curse— ‘then may the LORD make you an attested curse among your people by making your thigh shrivel and your belly swell.
Numbers 5:22 May this water that brings a curse enter your stomach and cause your belly to swell and your thigh to shrivel.’ Then the woman is to say, ‘Amen, Amen.’
- פָּרַר pârarbreak, frustratetranslated this way 1 time of its 47 uses · Strong’s H6565Verb · Translated: break 11, broken 7, nullifies 3, thwart 3Full study and all 46 verses →
Ecclesiastes 12:5 when men fear the heights and dangers of the road, when the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper loses its spring, and the caper berry shrivels — for then man goes to his eternal home and mourners walk the streets.
- רָפָה râphâhsink, relaxtranslated this way 1 time of its 44 uses · Strong’s H7503Verb · Translated: leave 4, abandon 3, go 3, Withdraw 2Full study and all 43 verses →
Isaiah 5:24 Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes the straw, and as dry grass shrivels in the flame, so their roots will decay and their blossoms will blow away like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of Hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
- יָבֵשׁ yâbêshbe dry, dried up, witheredtranslated this way 1 time of its 59 uses · Strong’s H3001Verb · Translated: dried 15, dry 13, withered 9, wither 5Full study and all 53 verses →
Ezekiel 17:9 So you are to tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Will it flourish? Will it not be uprooted and stripped of its fruit so that it shrivels? All its foliage will wither! It will not take a strong arm or many people to pull it up by its roots.
- צָפַד tsâphaddraw together, contracttranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H6821Verb · Translated: shriveled 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Lamentations 4:8 But now their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as a stick.
- עָבַשׁ âbashshriveltranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H5685Verb · Translated: lie shriveled 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Joel 1:17 The seeds lie shriveled beneath the clods; the storehouses are in ruins; the granaries are broken down, for the grain has withered away.
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.