Word study

Stag

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מַסַּע massapulling up, breaking camp, setting out, journeytranslated this way 2 times of its 12 uses · Strong’s H4550Noun  ·  Translated: journeys 2, set 2, journey 2

    Exodus 40:36 Whenever the cloud was lifted from above the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out through all the stages of their journey.

    Numbers 33:2 At the LORD’s command, Moses recorded the stages of their journey. These are the stages listed by their starting points:

    Full study and all 11 verses →
  • אַיָּל ayâlhart, stag, deertranslated this way 2 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H354Noun  ·  Translated: deer 6, stag 2, like a deer 1, like deer 1

    Song of Solomon 2:9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice.

    Song of Solomon 8:14 Come away, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices.

    Full study and all 10 verses →
  • מוֹצָא môtsâplace or act of going forth, issue, export, source, springtranslated this way 1 time of its 26 uses · Strong’s H4161Noun  ·  Translated: exits 3, imported 2, utterance 2, flowing springs 2

    Numbers 33:2 At the LORD’s command, Moses recorded the stages of their journey. These are the stages listed by their starting points:

    Full study and all 25 verses →
  • מַעַל maalhigher parttranslated this way 1 time of its 112 uses · Strong’s H4605Adverb  ·  Translated: older 30, above 21, more 8, upward 6

    Ezekiel 41:7 The side rooms surrounding the temple widened at each successive level, because the structure surrounding the temple ascended by stages corresponding to the narrowing of the temple wall as it rose upward. And so a stairway went up from the lowest story to the highest, through the middle one.

    Full study and all 109 verses →
  • עֹפֶר ôpheryoung hart, stagtranslated this way 1 time of its 5 uses · Strong’s H6082Noun  ·  Translated: young 2, fawns 2, young stag 1

    Song of Solomon 2:17 Before the day breaks and shadows flee, turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of Bether.

    Full study and all 5 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.