Word study
Spark
4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: sparks, spark. 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 “spark” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- בֵּן bênsontranslated this way 1 time of its 4,587 uses · Strong’s H1121Noun · Translated: son 1,843, sons 892, Israelites 422, descendants 358Full study and all 3,473 verses →
- כִידוֹד kîdôdsparktranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H3590Noun · Translated: sparks 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Job 41:19 Firebrands stream from his mouth; fiery sparks shoot forth!
- רֶשֶׁף reshephflame, fire-bolttranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s H7565Noun · Translated: pestilence 1, flaming arrows 1, bolts of lightning 1, sparks 1Full study and all 5 verses →
Song of Solomon 8:6 Set me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol. Its sparks are fiery flames, the fiercest blaze of all.
- נִיצוֹץ nîtsôtssparktranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H5213Noun · Translated: spark 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Isaiah 1:31 The strong man will become tinder and his work will be a spark; both will burn together, with no one to quench the flames.
Greek words (New Testament)
- πῦρ pŷrfire, trialstranslated this way 1 time of its 71 uses · Strong’s G4442Noun · Translated: fire 63, fiery 3, burning 2, flames of fire 1Full study and all 69 verses →
James 3:5 In the same way, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it boasts of great things. Consider how small a spark sets a great forest ablaze.
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.