Word study
Week
1 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word
The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: weeks, week. 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 “week” or one of its forms.
Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)
- שָׁבוּעַ shâbûaperiod of seventranslated this way 18 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s H7620Noun · Translated: weeks 12, week's celebration 2, week 2, two weeks 1Full study and all 17 verses →
Exodus 34:22 And you are to celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year.
Leviticus 12:5 If, however, she gives birth to a daughter, the woman will be unclean for two weeks as she is during her menstruation. Then she must continue in purification from her bleeding for sixty-six days.
Greek words (New Testament)
- σάββατον sábbatonthe Sabbath, a weektranslated this way 7 times of its 68 uses · Strong’s G4521Noun · Translated: Sabbath 57, week 7, of 2, Sabbath day's 1Full study and all 62 verses →
Mark 16:2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they went to the tomb.
Luke 18:12 I fast twice a week and pay tithes of all that I acquire.’
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.