Word study

Virgin

2 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • בְּתוּלָה bethûlâhvirgintranslated this way 31 times of its 50 uses · Strong’s H1330Noun  ·  Translated: virgin 26, maidens 7, young women 5, virgins 3

    Genesis 24:16 Now the girl was very beautiful, a virgin who had not had relations with any man. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up again.

    Exodus 22:16 If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged in marriage and sleeps with her, he must pay the full dowry for her to be his wife.

    Full study and all 50 verses →
  • בְּתוּלִים bethûlîmvirginitytranslated this way 5 times of its 10 uses · Strong’s H1331Noun  ·  Translated: virgin 5, virginity 5

    Leviticus 21:13 The woman he marries must be a virgin.

    Deuteronomy 22:14 and he then accuses her of shameful conduct and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman and had relations with her, but I discovered she was not a virgin.”

    Full study and all 9 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • παρθένος parthénosa virgintranslated this way 13 times of its 15 uses · Strong’s G3933Noun  ·  Translated: virgin 7, virgins 5, virgin's 1, unmarried 1

    Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means, “God with us”).

    Luke 1:27 to a virgin pledged in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.

    Full study and all 14 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.

What the Bible says about virgin: passages by topic →

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.