Word study

Victim

4 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָלָל châlâlpiercedtranslated this way 3 times of its 93 uses · Strong’s H2491Noun  ·  Translated: slain 53, dead 6, killed 6, wounded 5

    Deuteronomy 21:2 your elders and judges must come out and measure the distance from the victim to the neighboring cities.

    Deuteronomy 21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest the victim shall take a heifer that has never been yoked or used for work,

    Full study and all 84 verses →
  • גָּזַל gâzaltear away, seize, robtranslated this way 2 times of its 28 uses · Strong’s H1497Verb  ·  Translated: snatched 3, seized 2, rob 2, robbed 2

    Jeremiah 21:12 O house of David, this is what the LORD says: ‘Administer justice every morning, and rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor, or My wrath will go forth like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it because of their evil deeds.

    Jeremiah 22:3 This is what the LORD says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from the hand of his oppressor. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Do not shed innocent blood in this place.

    Full study and all 28 verses →
  • חֵלְכָא chêlekâwretch, unfortunatetranslated this way 1 time of its 3 uses · Strong’s H2489Noun  ·  Translated: helpless 2, victim 1

    Psalm 10:14 But You have regarded trouble and grief; You see to repay it by Your hand. The victim entrusts himself to You; You are the helper of the fatherless.

    Full study and all 3 verses →
  • אָסַף âsaphgather, removetranslated this way 1 time of its 193 uses · Strong’s H622Verb  ·  Translated: gathered 56, gather 27, assembled 13, assemble 8

    Ezekiel 34:29 And I will raise up for them a garden of renown, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations.

    Full study and all 183 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.