Word study

Worry

1 Hebrew and 2 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: worry, worrying, worries, worried. 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 “worry” or one of its forms.

Compare the Greek words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • דָּאַג dâagbe anxious, concerned, feartranslated this way 3 times of its 7 uses · Strong’s H1672Verb  ·  Translated: start worrying 1, started worrying 1, troubled 1, dreaded 1

    1 Samuel 9:5 When they reached the land of Zuph, Saul said to his servant, “Come, let us go back, or my father will stop worrying about the donkeys and start worrying about us.”

    Jeremiah 17:8 He is like a tree planted by the waters that sends out its roots toward the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes, and its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year of drought, nor does it cease to produce fruit.

    Full study and all 7 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • μεριμνάω merimnáōI am anxious, distractedtranslated this way 12 times of its 19 uses · Strong’s G3309Verb  ·  Translated: worry 9, concerned 4, worrying 2

    Matthew 6:25 Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

    Luke 10:41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord replied, “you are worried and upset about many things.

    Full study and all 17 verses →
  • μέριμνα mérimnacare, worry, anxietytranslated this way 4 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G3308Noun  ·  Translated: worries 4, concern 1, anxiety 1

    Matthew 13:22 The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

    Mark 4:19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

    Full study and all 6 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.