Word study

Unaware

3 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָדַע yâdaknowtranslated this way 3 times of its 914 uses · Strong’s H3045Verb  ·  Translated: know 453, known 53, knows 48, knew 38

    Genesis 28:16 When Jacob woke up, he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was unaware of it.”

    Exodus 34:29 And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was unaware that his face had become radiant from speaking with the LORD.

    Full study and all 863 verses →
  • עָלַם âlamconcealtranslated this way 3 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s H5956Verb  ·  Translated: ignore 5, even if he is unaware 3, hide 3, hidden 3

    Leviticus 5:2 Or if a person touches anything unclean— whether the carcass of any unclean wild animal or livestock or crawling creature— even if he is unaware of it, he is unclean and guilty.

    Leviticus 5:3 Or if he touches human uncleanness— anything by which one becomes unclean— even if he is unaware of it, when he realizes it, he is guilty.

    Full study and all 27 verses →
  • לֹא lônottranslated this way 2 times of its 4,657 uses · Strong’s H3808Adverb  ·  Translated: no 309, not 269, never 218, will not 156Full study and all 3,775 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἀγνοέω agnoéōI do not know, am ignorant oftranslated this way 4 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s G50Verb  ·  Translated: unaware 4, understand 3, ignorant 3, uninformed 2

    Romans 1:13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, how often I planned to come to you (but have been prevented from visiting until now), in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

    1 Corinthians 10:1 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud, and that they all passed through the sea.

    Full study and all 21 verses →
  • εἴδω eídōI know, remembertranslated this way 2 times of its 317 uses · Strong’s G1492Verb  ·  Translated: know 218, knew 20, knows 16, knowing 14

    Acts 5:7 About three hours later his wife also came in, unaware of what had happened.

    Acts 12:9 So Peter followed him out, but he was unaware that what the angel was doing was real. He thought he was only seeing a vision.

    Full study and all 295 verses →
  • γινώσκω ginṓskōI come to know, learn, realizetranslated this way 1 time of its 220 uses · Strong’s G1097Verb  ·  Translated: know 95, understand 19, known 15, knew 12

    Luke 2:43 When those days were over and they were returning home, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but His parents were unaware He had stayed.

    Full study and all 205 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.