Word study

Victory

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • תְּשׁוּעָה teshûâhdeliverance, salvationtranslated this way 10 times of its 34 uses · Strong’s H8668Noun  ·  Translated: salvation 16, victory 10, deliverance 3, help 2

    2 Samuel 19:2 And that day’s victory was turned into mourning for all the people, because on that day they were told, “The king is grieving over his son.”

    2 Kings 5:1 Now Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man in his master’s sight and highly regarded, for through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. And he was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

    Full study and all 32 verses →
  • יָשַׁע yâshadelivertranslated this way 3 times of its 203 uses · Strong’s H3467Verb  ·  Translated: save 98, saved 40, saves 13, Savior 12

    Deuteronomy 20:4 For the LORD your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.”

    Psalm 44:3 For it was not by their sword that they took the land; their arm did not bring them victory. It was by Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your face, because You favored them.

    Full study and all 198 verses →
  • יְשׁוּעָה yeshûâhsalvationtranslated this way 2 times of its 78 uses · Strong’s H3444Noun  ·  Translated: salvation 67, Savior 2

    Psalm 20:5 May we shout for joy at your victory and raise a banner in the name of our God. May the LORD grant all your petitions.

    Psalm 44:4 You are my King, O God, who ordains victories for Jacob.

    Full study and all 77 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • νῖκος nîkosvictorytranslated this way 4 times of its 4 uses · Strong’s G3534Noun  ·  Translated: victory 4

    Matthew 12:20 A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish, till He leads justice to victory.

    1 Corinthians 15:54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

    Full study and all 4 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.