Word study

Upright

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָשָׁר yâshârstraight, righttranslated this way 56 times of its 119 uses · Strong’s H3477Adjective  ·  Translated: upright 54, right 41, seems right 4, Jashar 2

    Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are just. A God of faithfulness without injustice, righteous and upright is He.

    1 Samuel 29:6 So Achish summoned David and told him, “As surely as the LORD lives, you have been upright, and it seems right in my sight that you should march in and out with me in the army, because I have found no fault in you from the day you came to me until this day. But you are not good in the sight of the leaders.

    Full study and all 119 verses →
  • יֹשֶׁר yôsherstraightness, uprightnesstranslated this way 3 times of its 14 uses · Strong’s H3476Noun  ·  Translated: uprightness 4, upright 3, right 2, straight 2

    1 Chronicles 29:17 I know, my God, that You test the heart and delight in uprightness. All these things I have given willingly and with an upright heart, and now I have seen Your people who are present here giving joyfully and willingly to You.

    Job 33:3 My words are from an upright heart, and my lips speak sincerely what I know.

    Full study and all 14 verses →
  • שָׁלָב shâlâbspacer, raised interval, stile in a frametranslated this way 3 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H7948Noun  ·  Translated: uprights 3

    1 Kings 7:28 This was the design of the stands: They had side panels attached to uprights,

    1 Kings 7:29 and on the panels between the uprights were lions, oxen, and cherubim. On the uprights was a pedestal above, and below the lions and oxen were wreaths of beveled work.

    Full study and all 2 verses →
  • עָמַד âmadtake one's stand, standtranslated this way 2 times of its 508 uses · Strong’s H5975Verb  ·  Translated: stood 99, stand 95, standing 50, stands 12

    Exodus 26:15 You are to construct upright frames of acacia wood for the tabernacle.

    Exodus 36:20 Next, he constructed upright frames of acacia wood for the tabernacle.

    Full study and all 485 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.