Word study

Star

2 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: stars, star, staring, stared. 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 “star” 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)

  • כּוֹכָב kôkâbstartranslated this way 37 times of its 37 uses · Strong’s H3556Noun  ·  Translated: stars 31, like the stars 3, star 2, more than the stars 1

    Genesis 1:16 God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well.

    Exodus 32:13 Remember Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom You swore by Your very self when You declared, ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land that I have promised, and it shall be their inheritance forever.’”

    Full study and all 37 verses →
  • צָבָא tsâbâarmy, war, warfaretranslated this way 3 times of its 468 uses · Strong’s H6635Noun  ·  Translated: Hosts 286, army 66, host 23, divisions 21

    Psalm 33:6 By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the stars by the breath of His mouth.

    Full study and all 448 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἀστήρ astḗra startranslated this way 24 times of its 24 uses · Strong’s G792Noun  ·  Translated: stars 13, star 11

    Matthew 2:2 asking, “Where is the One who has been born King of the Jews? We saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.”

    Mark 13:25 the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.’

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • ἄστρον ástrona startranslated this way 4 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G798Noun  ·  Translated: stars 3, star 1

    Luke 21:25 There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves.

    Acts 7:43 You have taken along the tabernacle of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’

    Full study and all 4 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.