Word study

Unfaithfully

2 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • מַעַל maalunfaithful, treacherous acttranslated this way 5 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H4604Noun  ·  Translated: unfaithfulness 10, unfaithfully 5, committed 3, breach of faith 2

    Leviticus 5:15 “If someone acts unfaithfully and sins unintentionally against any of the LORD’s holy things, he must bring his guilt offering to the LORD: an unblemished ram from the flock, of proper value in silver shekels according to the sanctuary shekel; it is a guilt offering.

    Numbers 5:6 “Tell the Israelites that when a man or woman acts unfaithfully against the LORD by committing any sin against another, that person is guilty

    Full study and all 22 verses →
  • מָעַל mâalact unfaithfully, treacherouslytranslated this way 4 times of its 33 uses · Strong’s H4603Verb  ·  Translated: unfaithful 13, acts 3, acted unfaithfully 2, acting unfaithfully 2

    2 Chronicles 26:18 They took their stand against King Uzziah and said, “Uzziah, you have no right to offer incense to the LORD. Only the priests, the descendants of Aaron, are consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have acted unfaithfully; you will not receive honor from the LORD God.”

    Nehemiah 13:27 Must we now hear that you too are doing all this terrible evil and acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?”

    Full study and all 33 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.