Word study

Sling

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • קֶלַע qelaslingtranslated this way 3 times of its 18 uses · Strong’s H7050Noun  ·  Translated: curtains 13, sling 3, make curtains 1, Make the curtains 1

    1 Samuel 17:40 And David took his staff in his hand, selected five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag. And with his sling in hand, he approached the Philistine.

    1 Samuel 17:50 Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.

    Full study and all 18 verses →
  • קָלַע qâlasling, hurl forthtranslated this way 2 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H7049Verb  ·  Translated: carved 3, sling 2, slung 1, fling away 1

    Judges 20:16 Among all these soldiers there were 700 select left-handers, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair without missing.

    Jeremiah 10:18 For this is what the LORD says: “Behold, at this time I will sling out the inhabitants of the land and bring distress upon them so that they may be captured.”

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • מַרְגֵּמָה margêmâhslingtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H4773Noun  ·  Translated: sling 1

    Proverbs 26:8 Like binding a stone into a sling is the giving of honor to a fool.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
  • אֵל êlmotion totranslated this way 1 time of its 4,199 uses · Strong’s H413Preposition  ·  Translated: to 1,941, to me 285, to you 149, to him 137Full study and all 3,455 verses →
  • קַלָּע qallâslingertranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H7051Noun  ·  Translated: men with slings 1

    2 Kings 3:25 They destroyed the cities, and each man threw stones on every good field until it was covered. They stopped up every spring and cut down every good tree. Only Kir-haraseth was left with stones in place, but men with slings surrounded it and attacked it as well.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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 sling: 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.