Word study

Spy

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: spies, spy, spied, spying. 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 “spy” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • רָגַל râgalfoot it, go abouttranslated this way 23 times of its 25 uses · Strong’s H7270Verb  ·  Translated: spies 11, spy 8, spied 3, accused us of spying 1

    Genesis 42:9 Joseph remembered his dreams about them and said, “You are spies! You have come to see if our land is vulnerable.”

    Numbers 21:32 After Moses had sent spies to Jazer, Israel captured its villages and drove out the Amorites who were there.

    Full study and all 24 verses →
  • תּוּר tûrseek out, spy out, exploretranslated this way 11 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H8446Verb  ·  Translated: spy 5, spied 4, seek 2, explore 2

    Numbers 13:2 “Send out for yourself men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each of their fathers’ tribes send one man who is a leader among them.”

    Judges 1:23 They sent spies to Bethel (formerly known as Luz),

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • חָפַר châphardig, search fortranslated this way 3 times of its 21 uses · Strong’s H2658Verb  ·  Translated: dug 11, search 2, spy 2

    Joshua 2:2 And it was reported to the king of Jericho: “Behold, some men of Israel have come here tonight to spy out the land.”

    Job 39:29 From there he spies out food; his eyes see it from afar.

    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.