Word study
Spit
4 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: spit, spits, spitting. 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 “spit” 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)
- יָרָק yârâqspittranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H3417Verb · Translated: spit 2Full study and all 2 verses →
Numbers 12:14 But the LORD answered Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Let her be confined outside the camp for seven days; after that she may be brought back in.”
Deuteronomy 25:9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who will not maintain his brother’s line.”
- רָקַק râqaqspittranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H7556Verb · Translated: spits 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Leviticus 15:8 If the man with the discharge spits on one who is clean, that person must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean until evening.
- תֹּפֶת tôphethspittingtranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s H8611Noun · Translated: spit 1Full study and its 1 verse →
Job 17:6 He has made me a byword among the people, a man in whose face they spit.
- רֹק rôqspittletranslated this way 1 time of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7536Noun · Translated: spittle 2, spit 1Full study and all 3 verses →
Job 30:10 They abhor me and keep far from me; they do not hesitate to spit in my face.
Greek words (New Testament)
- ἐμπτύω emptýōI spit upontranslated this way 6 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G1716Verb · Translated: spit 5, spitting 1Full study and all 6 verses →
Matthew 26:67 Then they spit in His face and struck Him. Others slapped Him
Mark 10:34 who will mock Him and spit on Him and flog Him and kill Him. And after three days He will rise again.”
- πτύω ptýōI spittranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G4429Verb · Translated: spit 3Full study and all 3 verses →
Mark 7:33 So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, and put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spit and touched the man’s tongue.
John 9:6 When Jesus had said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud, and applied it to the man’s eyes.
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.