Word study

Tribe

5 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מַטֶּה maṭṭehstaff, rod, shafttranslated this way 145 times of its 219 uses · Strong’s H4294Noun  ·  Translated: tribe 123, staff 41, tribes 21, staffs 5

    Exodus 31:2 “See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.

    Leviticus 24:11 The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name with a curse. So they brought him to Moses. (His mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.)

    Full study and all 200 verses →
  • שֵׁבֶט shêbeṭrod, staff, club, sceptretranslated this way 120 times of its 168 uses · Strong’s H7626Noun  ·  Translated: tribes 70, tribe 42, rod 22, scepter 14

    Genesis 49:16 Dan shall provide justice for his people as one of the tribes of Israel.

    Exodus 24:4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Early the next morning he got up and built an altar at the base of the mountain, along with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel.

    Full study and all 159 verses →
  • בֵּן bênsontranslated this way 7 times of its 4,587 uses · Strong’s H1121Noun  ·  Translated: son 1,843, sons 892, Israelites 422, descendants 358Full study and all 3,473 verses →
  • אָב âbfathertranslated this way 3 times of its 1,167 uses · Strong’s H1Noun  ·  Translated: father 518, fathers 341, father's 129, families 72Full study and all 1,040 verses →
  • עֵרֶב êrebmixture, mixed companytranslated this way 2 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s H6154Noun  ·  Translated: knit 9, mixed tribes 2, mixed 1, foreign descent 1

    Jeremiah 25:20 all the mixed tribes; all the kings of Uz; all the kings of the Philistines: Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod;

    Jeremiah 25:24 all the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the mixed tribes who dwell in the desert;

    Full study and all 15 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • φυλή phylḗa tribe, racetranslated this way 29 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s G5443Noun  ·  Translated: tribe 21, tribes 8, from 1, of 1

    Matthew 19:28 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, in the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

    Luke 2:36 There was also a prophetess named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, who was well along in years. She had been married for seven years,

    Full study and all 23 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.