Word study
Wasteland
6 Hebrew words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: wasteland, wastelands. 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 “wasteland” or one of its forms.
Compare the Hebrew words side by side
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- יְשִׁימוֹן yeshîmônwaste, wildernesstranslated this way 4 times of its 13 uses · Strong’s H3452Noun · Translated: Jeshimon 4, desert 4, wasteland 3, wilderness 1Full study and all 13 verses →
Numbers 21:20 and from Bamoth to the valley in Moab where the top of Pisgah overlooks the wasteland.
Psalm 68:7 O God, when You went out before Your people, when You marched through the wasteland, Selah
- תֹּהוּ tôhûformlessness, confusion, unreality, emptinesstranslated this way 4 times of its 20 uses · Strong’s H8414Noun · Translated: empty 4, wasteland 4, formless 2, chaos 2Full study and all 19 verses →
Job 6:18 Caravans turn aside from their routes; they go into the wasteland and perish.
Psalm 107:40 He pours out contempt on the nobles and makes them wander in a trackless wasteland.
- שְׁמָמָה shemâmâha devastation, wastetranslated this way 4 times of its 56 uses · Strong’s H8077Noun · Translated: desolate 26, desolation 19, wasteland 4Full study and all 52 verses →
Joel 2:3 Before them a fire devours, and behind them a flame scorches. The land before them is like the Garden of Eden, but behind them, it is like a desert wasteland — surely nothing will escape them.
Zephaniah 2:9 Therefore, as surely as I live,” declares the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, “surely Moab will be like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah— a place of weeds and salt pits, a perpetual wasteland. The remnant of My people will plunder them; the remainder of My nation will dispossess them.”
- חׇרְבָּה chorbâhwaste, desolation, ruintranslated this way 3 times of its 42 uses · Strong’s H2723Noun · Translated: ruins 19, ruin 5, wasteland 3, desolation 3Full study and all 42 verses →
Jeremiah 7:34 I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sounds of joy and gladness and the voices of the bride and bridegroom, for the land will become a wasteland.”
Ezekiel 25:13 therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: I will stretch out My hand against Edom and cut off from it both man and beast. I will make it a wasteland, and from Teman to Dedan they will fall by the sword.
- מְשׁוֹאָה meshôâhdesolationtranslated this way 2 times of its 3 uses · Strong’s H4875Noun · Translated: wasteland 2, desolation 1Full study and all 3 verses →
Job 30:3 Gaunt from poverty and hunger, they gnawed the dry land, and the desolate wasteland by night.
Job 38:27 to satisfy the parched wasteland and make it sprout with tender grass?
- מִדְבָּר midbârmouthtranslated this way 2 times of its 269 uses · Strong’s H4057Noun · Translated: wilderness 203, desert 49, like a desert 3, open 3Full study and all 256 verses →
Isaiah 64:10 Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wasteland and Jerusalem a desolation.
Jeremiah 12:10 Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.
How to study a word well
- 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.
- 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.
- Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
- 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.
- See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
- Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
- 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.