Word study

Spoil

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שָׁלָל shâlâlprey, spoil, plunder, bootytranslated this way 22 times of its 73 uses · Strong’s H7998Noun  ·  Translated: plunder 42, spoil 13, spoils 5, like a spoil of war 3

    Exodus 15:9 The enemy declared, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword; my hand will destroy them.’

    Deuteronomy 20:14 But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city— all its spoil— you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that the LORD your God gives you.

    Full study and all 64 verses →
  • מַלְקוֹחַ malqôachbooty, preytranslated this way 2 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H4455Noun  ·  Translated: plunder 3, spoils 2, captured 1, captives 1

    Numbers 31:11 and carried away all the plunder and spoils, both people and animals.

    Numbers 31:12 They brought the captives, spoils, and plunder to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of Israel at the camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.

    Full study and all 8 verses →
  • בַּז bazspoiling, robbery; spoil, bootytranslated this way 2 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H957Noun  ·  Translated: plunder 12, prey 4

    Numbers 31:32 and this plunder remained from the spoils the soldiers had taken: 675,000 sheep,

    Ezekiel 36:4 therefore, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD. This is what the Lord GOD says to the mountains and hills, to the ravines and valleys, to the desolate ruins and abandoned cities, which have become a spoil and a mockery to the rest of the nations around you.

    Full study and all 21 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.