Word study

Sickness

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חֳלִי chŏlîsicknesstranslated this way 9 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H2483Noun  ·  Translated: sickness 7, illness 5, disease 3

    Deuteronomy 7:15 And the LORD will remove from you all sickness. He will not lay upon you any of the terrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but He will inflict them on all who hate you.

    1 Kings 17:17 Later, the son of the woman who owned the house became ill, and his sickness grew worse and worse, until no breath remained in him.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • מַחֲלֶה machălehsickness, diseasetranslated this way 4 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s H4245Noun  ·  Translated: sickness 4, diseases 1, disease 1

    Exodus 23:25 So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take away sickness from among you.

    1 Kings 8:37 When famine or plague comes upon the land, or blight or mildew or locusts or grasshoppers, or when their enemy besieges them in their cities, whatever plague or sickness may come,

    Full study and all 6 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • μαλακία malakíaweakness, illnesstranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G3119Noun  ·  Translated: sickness 3

    Matthew 4:23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

    Matthew 9:35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • ἀσθένεια asthéneiawant of strength, weakness, illnesstranslated this way 2 times of its 24 uses · Strong’s G769Noun  ·  Translated: weakness 9, weaknesses 4, infirmities 2

    Luke 5:15 But the news about Jesus spread all the more, and great crowds came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses.

    John 11:4 When Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

    Full study and all 23 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 sickness: 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.