Word study

Surface

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • פָּנִים pânîmface, beforetranslated this way 14 times of its 1,836 uses · Strong’s H6440Noun  ·  Translated: before 448, face 222, presence 147, before you 123

    Genesis 1:2 Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

    Genesis 2:6 But springs welled up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

    Full study and all 1,671 verses →
  • קִיר qîrwalltranslated this way 1 time of its 64 uses · Strong’s H7023Noun  ·  Translated: wall 39, walls 13, sides 3, side 2

    Leviticus 14:37 He is to examine the house, and if the mildew on the walls consists of green or red depressions that appear to be beneath the surface of the wall,

    Full study and all 55 verses →
  • לוּחַ lûachtablet, board or plank, platetranslated this way 1 time of its 42 uses · Strong’s H3871Noun  ·  Translated: tablets 33, tablet 3, boards 2

    1 Kings 7:36 He engraved cherubim, lions, and palm trees on the surfaces of the supports and panels, wherever each had space, with wreaths all around.

    Full study and all 33 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.