Word study

Topple

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מוֹט môṭtotter, shake, sliptranslated this way 3 times of its 36 uses · Strong’s H4131Verb  ·  Translated: shaken 11, moved 7, fall 2, toppled 2

    Psalm 46:2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth is transformed and the mountains are toppled into the depths of the seas,

    Isaiah 40:20 One lacking such an offering chooses wood that will not rot. He seeks a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple.

    Full study and all 35 verses →
  • נָפַל nâphalfall, lietranslated this way 1 time of its 432 uses · Strong’s H5307Verb  ·  Translated: fall 104, fell 77, fallen 54, falls 21

    2 Samuel 20:15 And Joab’s troops came and besieged Sheba in Abel-beth-maacah and built a siege ramp against the outer rampart of the city. As all the troops with Joab were battering the wall to topple it,

    Full study and all 403 verses →
  • בָּצַע bâtsacut off, break off, gain by violencetranslated this way 1 time of its 16 uses · Strong’s H1214Verb  ·  Translated: greedy 5, cut 2

    Amos 9:1 I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and He said: “Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Topple them on the heads of all the people, and I will kill the rest with the sword. None of those who flee will get away; none of the fugitives will escape.

    Full study and all 16 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.