Word study

Storm

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • סַעַר saartempesttranslated this way 6 times of its 20 uses · Strong’s H5591Noun  ·  Translated: whirlwind 6, storm 6, tempest 4

    Psalm 107:29 He calmed the storm to a whisper, and the waves of the sea were hushed.

    Jeremiah 23:19 Behold, the storm of the LORD has gone out with fury, a whirlwind swirling down upon the heads of the wicked.

    Full study and all 19 verses →
  • זֶרֶם zeremflood of rain, rain-storm, downpourtranslated this way 4 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H2230Noun  ·  Translated: storm 4, rains 1, like rain 1, like a driving rain 1

    Isaiah 4:6 a shelter to give shade from the heat by day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and the rain.

    Isaiah 25:4 For You have been a refuge for the poor, a stronghold for the needy in distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like rain against a wall,

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • סוּפָה sûphâhstorm-windtranslated this way 2 times of its 16 uses · Strong’s H5492Noun  ·  Translated: tempest 3, like a whirlwind 3, whirlwind 3, storm 2

    Job 21:18 Are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a storm?

    Psalm 83:15 so pursue them with Your tempest, and terrify them with Your storm.

    Full study and all 16 verses →
  • סָעַר sâarstorm, ragetranslated this way 2 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H5590Verb  ·  Translated: became enraged 1, lashed by storms 1, blown 1, worse 1

    Isaiah 54:11 “O afflicted city, lashed by storms, without solace, surely I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires.

    Habakkuk 3:14 With his own spear You pierced his head, when his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though ready to secretly devour the weak.

    Full study and all 7 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.