Word study

Spear

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חֲנִית chănîthspeartranslated this way 44 times of its 45 uses · Strong’s H2595Noun  ·  Translated: spear 37, spears 6, thrust the spear 1, and 1

    1 Samuel 13:19 And no blacksmith could be found in all the land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “The Hebrews must not be allowed to make swords or spears.”

    2 Samuel 1:6 “I happened to be on Mount Gilboa,” he replied, “and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and the cavalry closing in on him.

    Full study and all 39 verses →
  • רֹמַח rômachspear, lancetranslated this way 14 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H7420Noun  ·  Translated: spears 10, spear 4, lances 1

    Numbers 25:7 On seeing this, Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, got up from the assembly, took a spear in his hand,

    Judges 5:8 When they chose new gods, then war came to their gates. Not a shield or spear was found among forty thousand in Israel.

    Full study and all 15 verses →
  • כִּידוֹן kîdôndart, javelintranslated this way 2 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H3591Noun  ·  Translated: battle lance 3, javelin 2, lance 2, spear 2

    Jeremiah 6:23 They grasp the bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride upon horses, lined up like men in formation against you, O Daughter of Zion.”

    Jeremiah 50:42 They grasp the bow and spear; they are cruel and merciless. Their voice roars like the sea, and they ride upon horses, lined up like men in formation against you, O Daughter of Babylon.

    Full study and all 8 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 spear: 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.