Word study
Stalk
4 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: stalk, stalks, stalked. 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 “stalk” 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)
- קָנֶה qânehstalk, reedtranslated this way 2 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H7070Noun · Translated: branches 9, rod 9, reeds 5, branch 4Full study and all 37 verses →
Genesis 41:5 but he fell back asleep and dreamed a second time: Seven heads of grain, plump and ripe, came up on one stalk.
Genesis 41:22 In my dream I also saw seven heads of grain, plump and ripe, growing on a single stalk.
- עֵץ êtstree, trees, woodtranslated this way 1 time of its 307 uses · Strong’s H6086Noun · Translated: wood 103, trees 66, tree 58, timber 12Full study and all 277 verses →
Joshua 2:6 (But Rahab had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had laid out there.)
- הָלַךְ hâlakgo, come, walktranslated this way 1 time of its 1,461 uses · Strong’s H1980Verb · Translated: go 338, went 173, walk 116, Come 84Full study and all 1,299 verses →
- צוּד tsûdhunttranslated this way 1 time of its 17 uses · Strong’s H6679Verb · Translated: hunt 7, hunted 2, ensnare 2Full study and all 15 verses →
Lamentations 4:18 They stalked our every step, so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end drew near, our time ran out, for our end had come!
Greek words (New Testament)
- χόρτος chórtosgrass, haytranslated this way 1 time of its 15 uses · Strong’s G5528Noun · Translated: grass 9, field 2, wheat 1, stalk 1Full study and all 13 verses →
Mark 4:28 All by itself the earth produces a crop— first the stalk, then the head, then grain that ripens within.
- ὕσσωπος hýssōposhyssoptranslated this way 1 time of its 2 uses · Strong’s G5301Noun · Translated: stalk of hyssop 1, hyssop 1Full study and all 2 verses →
John 19:29 A jar of sour wine was sitting there. So they soaked a sponge in the wine, put it on a stalk of hyssop, and lifted it to His mouth.
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.