Word study

Twelve

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “twelve”. 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 “twelve” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שְׁנַיִם shenayimtwotranslated this way 72 times of its 642 uses · Strong’s H8147Number  ·  Translated: two 364, twelve 68, both 33, 12 25

    Genesis 14:4 For twelve years they had been subject to Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

    Exodus 15:27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the waters.

    Full study and all 550 verses →
  • תְּרֵין terêntwotranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H8648Number  ·  Translated: twelve 2, second 1

    Ezra 6:17 For the dedication of the house of God they offered a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and a sin offering for all Israel of twelve male goats, one for each tribe of Israel.

    Daniel 4:29 Twelve months later, as he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon,

    Full study and all 3 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • δώδεκα dṓdekatwelvetranslated this way 61 times of its 74 uses · Strong’s G1427Adjective  ·  Translated: twelve 61, 12 000 13

    Matthew 9:20 Suddenly a woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His cloak.

    Mark 3:14 He appointed twelve of them, whom He designated as apostles, to accompany Him, to be sent out to preach,

    Full study and all 61 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.