Word study

Sinful

3 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “sinful”. 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 “sinful” 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)

  • חַטָּא chaṭṭâsinfultranslated this way 2 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s H2400Adjective  ·  Translated: sinners 14, sinful 2, sinning 1, sinned 1

    1 Samuel 15:18 and sent you on a mission, saying, ‘Go and devote to destruction the sinful Amalekites. Fight against them until you have wiped them out.’

    Amos 9:8 Surely the eyes of the Lord GOD are on the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the face of the earth. Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the LORD.

    Full study and all 19 verses →
  • חֵטְא chêṭesintranslated this way 2 times of its 32 uses · Strong’s H2399Noun  ·  Translated: sin 9, sins 7, guilt 4, guilty of sin 4

    Psalm 51:5 Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.

    Hosea 12:8 And Ephraim boasts: “How rich I have become! I have found wealth for myself. In all my labors, they can find in me no iniquity that is sinful.”

    Full study and all 32 verses →
  • אָוֶן âventrouble, sorrow, wickednesstranslated this way 2 times of its 68 uses · Strong’s H205Noun  ·  Translated: iniquity 27, evil 6, wicked 6, disaster 3

    Isaiah 59:6 Their cobwebs cannot be made into clothing, and they cannot cover themselves with their works. Their deeds are sinful deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands.

    Isaiah 59:7 Their feet run to evil; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are sinful thoughts; ruin and destruction lie in their wake.

    Full study and all 68 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἁμαρτωλός hamartōlóssinning, sinful, a sinnertranslated this way 8 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s G268Adjective  ·  Translated: sinners 29, sinner 9, sinful 8

    Mark 8:38 If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

    Luke 5:8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees. “Go away from me, Lord,” he said, “for I am a sinful man.”

    Full study and all 45 verses →
  • ἁμαρτία hamartíaa sintranslated this way 2 times of its 168 uses · Strong’s G266Noun  ·  Translated: sin 88, sins 72, guilty of sin 2, sinful 2

    Romans 7:5 For when we lived according to the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, bearing fruit for death.

    Romans 8:3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, as an offering for sin. He thus condemned sin in the flesh,

    Full study and all 146 verses →
  • σάρξ sárxflesh, bodytranslated this way 2 times of its 124 uses · Strong’s G4561Noun  ·  Translated: flesh 81, body 15, people 4, in 4

    Colossians 2:11 In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands.

    Colossians 2:13 When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses,

    Full study and all 113 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.