Word study

Swarm

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: swarms, swarm, swarming, swarmed. 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 “swarm” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • עָרֹב ârôbswarmtranslated this way 7 times of its 9 uses · Strong’s H6157Noun  ·  Translated: swarms 6, flies 1, swarms of flies 1, insects 1

    Exodus 8:21 But if you will not let My people go, I will send swarms of flies upon you and your officials and your people and your houses. The houses of the Egyptians and even the ground where they stand will be full of flies.

    Psalm 78:45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.

    Full study and all 7 verses →
  • אַרְבֶּה arbehlocusttranslated this way 5 times of its 24 uses · Strong’s H697Noun  ·  Translated: locusts 14, locust 3, swarming locust 3, like a locust 2

    Joel 1:4 What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.

    Nahum 3:15 There the fire will devour you; the sword will cut you down and consume you like a young locust. Make yourself many like the young locust; make yourself many like the swarming locust!

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • עָלָה âlâhgo up, ascend, climbtranslated this way 2 times of its 873 uses · Strong’s H5927Verb  ·  Translated: go 118, went 107, brought 56, come 42

    Exodus 10:12 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the land of Egypt, so that the locusts may swarm over it and devour every plant in the land — everything that the hail has left behind.”

    Exodus 10:14 The locusts swarmed across the land and settled over the entire territory of Egypt. Never before had there been so many locusts, and never again will there be.

    Full study and all 807 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.