Word study

Stature

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “stature”. 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 “stature” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מִדָּה middâhmeasure, measurement, stature, size, garmenttranslated this way 2 times of its 51 uses · Strong’s H4060Noun  ·  Translated: measurements 12, size 8, section 7, measuring 5

    Numbers 13:32 So they gave the Israelites a bad report about the land that they had spied out: “The land we explored devours its inhabitants, and all the people we saw there are great in stature.

    Isaiah 45:14 This is what the LORD says: “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, along with the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours; they will trudge behind you; they will come over in chains and bow down to you. They will confess to you: ‘God is indeed with you, and there is no other; there is no other God.’”

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • גָּדֵל gâdêlbecoming great, growing uptranslated this way 1 time of its 3 uses · Strong’s H1432Verb  ·  Translated: wealthy 1, stature 1, lustful 1

    1 Samuel 2:26 And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the LORD and with man.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • קוֹמָה qômâhheighttranslated this way 1 time of its 42 uses · Strong’s H6967Noun  ·  Translated: high 27, height 7, tallest 2, tall 2

    Song of Solomon 7:7 Your stature is like a palm tree; your breasts are clusters of fruit.

    Full study and all 41 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἡλικία hēlikíaage, staturetranslated this way 2 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s G2244Noun  ·  Translated: life 2, stature 2, old enough 2, of 1

    Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

    Luke 19:3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but could not see over the crowd because he was small in stature.

    Full study and all 8 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.