Word study

Woe

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

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

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • הוֹי hôyAh, Alas, Hatranslated this way 36 times of its 51 uses · Strong’s H1945Interjection  ·  Translated: Woe 36, Alas 8, Get 3, Ah 1

    Isaiah 5:8 Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land.

    Jeremiah 22:13 “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who makes his countrymen serve without pay, and fails to pay their wages,

    Full study and all 47 verses →
  • אוֹי ôywoe!translated this way 23 times of its 24 uses · Strong’s H188Interjection  ·  Translated: Woe 23, Ah 1

    Numbers 21:29 Woe to you, O Moab! You are destroyed, O people of Chemosh! He gave up his sons as refugees, and his daughters into captivity to Sihon king of the Amorites.

    1 Samuel 4:7 the Philistines were afraid. “The gods have entered their camp!” they said. “Woe to us, for nothing like this has happened before.

    Full study and all 23 verses →
  • אַלְלַי alelayalas! woe!translated this way 2 times of its 2 uses · Strong’s H480Interjection  ·  Translated: woe 2

    Job 10:15 If I am guilty, woe to me! And even if I am righteous, I cannot lift my head. I am full of shame and aware of my affliction.

    Micah 7:1 Woe is me! For I am like one gathering summer fruit at the gleaning of the vineyard; there is no cluster to eat, no early fig that I crave.

    Full study and all 2 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • οὐαί ouaíwoe!, alas!translated this way 43 times of its 46 uses · Strong’s G3759Interjection  ·  Translated: Woe 42, miserable 3, woes 1

    Matthew 11:21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

    Mark 14:21 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

    Full study and all 35 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.