Word study

Sour

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בֹּסֶר bôserunripe or sour grapestranslated this way 3 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s H1155Noun  ·  Translated: sour grapes 3, grape 1

    Jeremiah 31:29 “In those days, it will no longer be said: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.’

    Ezekiel 18:2 “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge’?

    Full study and all 4 verses →
  • בְּאֻשִׁים beushîmstinkingtranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H891Noun  ·  Translated: sour 1, sour fruit 1

    Isaiah 5:2 He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour!

    Isaiah 5:4 What more could have been done for My vineyard than I have done for it? Why, when I expected sweet grapes, did it bring forth sour fruit?

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • הָפַךְ hâphakturn, overturntranslated this way 1 time of its 93 uses · Strong’s H2015Verb  ·  Translated: turned 27, turn 7, changed 4, overthrew 3

    Job 20:14 yet in his stomach his food sours into the venom of cobras within him.

    Full study and all 91 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ὄξος óxosvinegar, sour winetranslated this way 5 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G3690Noun  ·  Translated: sour wine 5, wine 1

    Matthew 27:48 One of them quickly ran and brought a sponge. He filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed, and held it up for Jesus to drink.

    Mark 15:36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine. He put it on a reed and held it up for Jesus to drink, saying, “Leave Him alone. Let us see if Elijah comes to take Him down.”

    Full study and all 5 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.