Word study

Warrior

5 Hebrew words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • גִּבּוֹר gibbôrstrong, mightytranslated this way 26 times of its 156 uses · Strong’s H1368Adjective  ·  Translated: mighty men 50, mighty 45, warriors 13, mighty man 12

    Job 16:14 He breaks me with wound upon wound; He rushes me like a mighty warrior.

    Psalm 33:16 No king is saved by his vast army; no warrior is delivered by his great strength.

    Full study and all 151 verses →
  • אִישׁ îshmantranslated this way 8 times of its 1,399 uses · Strong’s H376Noun  ·  Translated: man 650, men 198, one 79, each 79

    Exodus 15:3 The LORD is a warrior, the LORD is His name.

    Full study and all 1,278 verses →
  • מִלְחָמָה milchâmâhbattle, wartranslated this way 4 times of its 298 uses · Strong’s H4421Noun  ·  Translated: battle 135, war 96, fight 11, army 5

    1 Kings 12:21 And when Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mobilized the whole house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin — 180,000 chosen warriors — to fight against the house of Israel and restore the kingdom to Rehoboam son of Solomon.

    2 Chronicles 11:1 When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mobilized the house of Judah and Benjamin — 180,000 chosen warriors — to fight against Israel and restore the kingdom to Rehoboam.

    Full study and all 289 verses →
  • אֱנוֹשׁ ĕnôshman, mankindtranslated this way 4 times of its 470 uses · Strong’s H582Noun  ·  Translated: men 368, man 25, people 5, husbands 4Full study and all 447 verses →
  • קָרוֹב qârôbneartranslated this way 2 times of its 74 uses · Strong’s H7138Adjective  ·  Translated: near 38, nearest 4, nearby 3, next 2

    Ezekiel 23:5 Oholah prostituted herself while she was still Mine. She lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians — warriors

    Ezekiel 23:12 She too lusted after the Assyrians — governors and commanders, warriors dressed in splendor, horsemen riding on steeds, all desirable young men.

    Full study and all 72 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.