Word study

Village

4 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • חָצֵר châtsêrenclosure, courttranslated this way 48 times of its 184 uses · Strong’s H2691Noun  ·  Translated: courtyard 61, court 43, villages 28, along with their villages 19

    Genesis 25:16 These were the sons of Ishmael, and these were their names by their villages and encampments — twelve princes of their tribes.

    Leviticus 25:31 But houses in villages with no walls around them are to be considered as open fields. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the Jubilee.

    Full study and all 161 verses →
  • בַּת bathdaughtertranslated this way 21 times of its 551 uses · Strong’s H1323Noun  ·  Translated: daughter 255, daughters 218, villages 19, towns 6

    Numbers 21:25 Israel captured all the cities of the Amorites and occupied them, including Heshbon and all its villages.

    Judges 1:27 At that time Manasseh failed to drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean, Taanach, Dor, Ibleam, Megiddo, and their villages; for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land.

    Full study and all 486 verses →
  • עִיר îrexcitementtranslated this way 8 times of its 1,034 uses · Strong’s H5892Noun  ·  Translated: city 583, cities 344, towns 21, town 13

    Joshua 10:37 They captured it and put to the sword its king, all its villages, and all the people. Joshua left no survivors, just as he had done at Eglon; he devoted to destruction Hebron and everyone in it.

    Joshua 10:39 And they captured Debir, its king, and all its villages. They put them to the sword and devoted to destruction everyone in the city, leaving no survivors. Joshua did to Debir and its king as he had done to Hebron and as he had done to Libnah and its king.

    Full study and all 925 verses →
  • חַוָּה chavvâhtent-villagetranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H2333Noun  ·  Translated: villages 2, towns 1

    Numbers 32:41 Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, went and captured their villages and called them Havvoth-jair.

    1 Kings 4:13 Ben-geber in Ramoth-gilead (the villages of Jair son of Manasseh in Gilead belonged to him, as well as the region of Argob in Bashan with its sixty great cities with walls and bronze bars);

    Full study and all 3 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • κώμη kṓmēa villagetranslated this way 29 times of its 27 uses · Strong’s G2968Noun  ·  Translated: village 16, villages 9, village to village 2

    Matthew 9:35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.

    Mark 6:6 And He was amazed at their unbelief. And He went around from village to village, teaching the people.

    Full study and all 27 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.