Word study

Unfaithful

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מָעַל mâalact unfaithfully, treacherouslytranslated this way 15 times of its 33 uses · Strong’s H4603Verb  ·  Translated: unfaithful 13, acts 3, acted unfaithfully 2, acting unfaithfully 2

    Numbers 5:12 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them that if any man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him

    Joshua 22:20 Was not Achan son of Zerah unfaithful regarding what was set apart for destruction, bringing wrath upon the whole congregation of Israel? Yet it was not only Achan who perished because of his sin!’”

    Full study and all 33 verses →
  • בָּגַד bâgadact or deal treacherouslytranslated this way 6 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s H898Verb  ·  Translated: faithless 11, betrayed 6, unfaithful 5, broken faith 3

    Proverbs 2:22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the unfaithful will be uprooted.

    Jeremiah 3:8 She saw that because faithless Israel had committed adultery, I gave her a certificate of divorce and sent her away. Yet that unfaithful sister Judah had no fear and prostituted herself as well.

    Full study and all 38 verses →
  • זָנָה zânâhcommit fornication, be a harlottranslated this way 2 times of its 89 uses · Strong’s H2181Verb  ·  Translated: prostitute 29, prostituted 16, prostitutes 7, harlot 5

    Judges 19:2 But she was unfaithful to him and left him to return to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah. After she had been there four months,

    Psalm 73:27 Those far from You will surely perish; You destroy all who are unfaithful to You.

    Full study and all 81 verses →
  • בָּגוֹד bâgôdtreacheroustranslated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H901Adjective  ·  Translated: unfaithful 2

    Jeremiah 3:7 I thought that after she had done all these things, she would return to Me. But she did not return, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it.

    Jeremiah 3:10 Yet in spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the LORD.

    Full study and all 2 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.