Word study

Vow

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • נֶדֶר nedervowtranslated this way 56 times of its 59 uses · Strong’s H5088Noun  ·  Translated: vow 26, vows 24, vow offerings 3, offerings 2

    Genesis 28:20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and watch over me on this journey, and if He will provide me with food to eat and clothes to wear,

    Leviticus 7:16 If, however, the sacrifice he offers is a vow or a freewill offering, it shall be eaten on the day he presents his sacrifice, but the remainder may be eaten on the next day.

    Full study and all 56 verses →
  • נָדַר nâdarvowtranslated this way 15 times of its 31 uses · Strong’s H5087Verb  ·  Translated: made 9, vow 4, vowed 4, make 4

    Leviticus 27:8 But if the one making the vow is too poor to pay the valuation, he is to present the person before the priest, who shall set the value according to what the one making the vow can afford.

    Numbers 6:2 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them that if a man or woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the LORD,

    Full study and all 28 verses →
  • שָׁבַע shâbasweartranslated this way 4 times of its 185 uses · Strong’s H7650Verb  ·  Translated: swore 43, sworn 32, swear 28, swore an oath 12

    Joshua 5:6 For the Israelites had wandered in the wilderness forty years, until all the nation’s men of war who had come out of Egypt had died, since they did not obey the LORD. So the LORD vowed never to let them see the land He had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

    1 Samuel 20:3 But David again vowed, “Your father knows very well that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, ‘Jonathan must not know of this, or he will be grieved.’ As surely as the LORD lives and as you yourself live, there is but a step between me and death.”

    Full study and all 175 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • εὐχή euchḗa prayer, vowtranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s G2171Noun  ·  Translated: vow 2, prayer offered 1

    Acts 18:18 Paul remained in Corinth for quite some time before saying goodbye to the brothers. He had his head shaved in Cenchrea to keep a vow he had made , and then he sailed for Syria, accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila.

    Acts 21:23 Therefore do what we advise you. There are four men with us who have taken a vow.

    Full study and all 3 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.