Word study

Woke

2 Hebrew and 3 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “woke”. 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 “woke” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • יָקַץ yâqatsawaketranslated this way 2 times of its 11 uses · Strong’s H3364Verb  ·  Translated: awoke 6, woke 2, when 1, awakened 1

    Genesis 28:16 When Jacob woke up, he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was unaware of it.”

    Genesis 41:4 And the cows that were sickly and thin devoured the seven sleek, well-fed cows. Then Pharaoh woke up,

    Full study and all 11 verses →
  • עוּר ûrrouse oneself, awaketranslated this way 1 time of its 80 uses · Strong’s H5782Verb  ·  Translated: Awake 19, stirred 9, awaken 6, rouse 5

    Zechariah 4:1 Then the angel who was speaking with me returned and woke me, as a man is awakened from his sleep.

    Full study and all 65 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • ἐγείρω egeírōI wake, arouse, raise uptranslated this way 5 times of its 144 uses · Strong’s G1453Verb  ·  Translated: raised 53, Get 18, risen 13, got 11

    Matthew 1:24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and embraced Mary as his wife.

    Mark 4:38 But Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him and said, “Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?”

    Full study and all 138 verses →
  • διεγείρω diegeírōI wake out of sleep, I arousetranslated this way 1 time of its 6 uses · Strong’s G1326Verb  ·  Translated: got 2, woke 1, grew agitated 1, refresh 1

    Luke 8:24 The disciples went and woke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Then Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters, and they subsided, and all was calm.

    Full study and all 5 verses →
  • ἔξυπνος éxypnosroused out of sleeptranslated this way 1 time of its 1 use · Strong’s G1853Adjective  ·  Translated: woke 1

    Acts 16:27 When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, presuming that the prisoners had escaped.

    Full study and its 1 verse →
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.