Word Studies

As we learned how to observe a passage in detail, we looked for key terms and phrases. We then raised questions about what those terms might mean. For example, “What does Paul mean when he uses the expression, ‘the righteousness of God’?” 

But how do we go about answering that sort of question? The answer is that we do a word study. A word study is a process for determining the possible meanings a particular biblical word had at the time a book of the Bible was written. Then, with that “dictionary entry” in mind, we determine which one of those meanings was most likely being used in the passage we are investigating.

The way words work is frequently misunderstood. We typically use the same word in several different ways. When you use a word in a sentence, the meaning of that word is typically a function of how people in general are using that word today. Dictionaries are like popularity contests. For example, the number one meaning is the way people are using the word the most today. Accordingly, dictionaries are constantly being updated. New meanings arise and are added to the dictionary. Old meanings fall out of use and are eventually removed from the dictionary. Modern dictionaries are always being updated.

When it comes to the Bible, there were no dictionaries around. We cannot look up what particular Greek words meant in Corinth in the year AD 50. We cannot look up what certain Hebrew words meant in ancient Jerusalem in 730 BC. Sometimes, we may have little to go on to determine how an ancient word was used at the time a book of the Bible was written.

Word studies are not hard to do once you understand how words work. The problem is that it is very popular to treat biblical words in ways that, quite frankly, are pretty strange. It would be very comical if your spouse or friends treated your words the way so many treat words in the Bible. These patterns of thinking can be so ingrained that we can go through the motions of a word study and end up with strange results. Interestingly, even some very trained individuals make these sorts of mistakes.

Word Fallacies

Since the meaning of a word is in how it is being used, knowing the ancient meaning or “etymology” of a word may or may not be helpful in knowing what a word means today. The history of a word’s meaning can be very interesting, but it often isn’t very relevant to what it means later.

Would it really help anyone know the word understand by breaking it apart into “under” and “stand”? We sometimes treat the Greek and Hebrew words of the Bible as if they were magical words unlike the way communication actually happens between people. By contrast, the biblical words were meant to be understood. These were words that everyday ancient Jews and Mediterranean's used in their ordinary conversations. 

No ancient Greek would have told you that the verb “to sin” means to “miss the mark.” No ancient Greek would have told you that the church consists of those who are “called out.” You hear these sorts of things repeatedly in church circles, but they reflect a lack of understanding of how words work.

There are therefore a number of word fallacies to keep in mind as you study the words of the Bible:

• Etymological fallacy – The past history of a word or the component parts of a word may have little to do with what the word came to mean later.
• Anachronism fallacy – What a word came to mean later may be different from what it meant earlier.
• Root fallacy – Words don’t necessarily have a root or basic meaning that is somehow present every time the word is used.
• One-meaning fallacy – As you look at the use of a word in a language, words typically have multiple meanings that may or may not be related to each other.
• Overload fallacy – When you look at a single instance of a word being used, a word does not contain a complex theology in it that carries over into every place the word is used. A word generally has one meaning for each individual place it is used.

It might be a little disappointing to realize that words in the Bible pretty much functioned like words function today. The word for church in Greek, ekklesia, meant a gathering. No one thought because of its etymology, “The church is those who are ‘called out.’” Similarly, no one thought, “To baptize is to immerse because of the root of the word.” Martyr did not yet mean “martyr” at the time of the New Testament, and agape was a fairly normal word for love that did not always mean a noble love.

Doing Word Studies

You probably know that most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, with a few chapters in the related language of Aramaic. The entirety of the New Testament was written in Greek. A word study is a tool meant to 1) create a kind of ancient dictionary entry for the way a particular Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek word was used at the time of the Old or New Testament. Then 2) you use that “dictionary entry” to hone in on how the word is being used in a specific passage.

In general, here are the steps in doing a word study on a word in the Bible:

Find the Word and Its Occurrences

We are blessed to live in a world with many online tools. If I want to know the Greek or Hebrew word being used in a sentence of the Bible, I can find it easily.

One tool is blueletterbible.org. Let’s say I want to know what word is used in Micah 6:8 when Micah says that God wants us to “do justice.” I go to blueletterbible.org and type in “Micah 6:8” into the search box and hit return.

Now, if I hit the box that says, “Tools,” the Hebrew original of the verse will pop up. If I scroll down, I eventually come to the word justice on the left hand side. Even though I may not know how to read Hebrew, there is the word! Underneath the Hebrew word, it even gives me an spelling I can read: mišpāṭ. 

There is a number next to the word: H4941. “H” stands for Hebrew, and the poor soul who first cataloged the Hebrew words of the Old Testament numbered this word as the 4,941st one. The page I am on now has quasi-dictionary information at the top, and what is called a “concordance” at the bottom. A concordance tells you all the places in the Old Testament where this word is used.

Please do not spend too much time looking at the dictionary entries at the top. Scholars of an earlier generation often fell into the traps of word fallacies we mentioned above. You are going to make a dictionary entry of your own! With a clearer understanding than those older scholars, you will be able to listen to the biblical text more clearly than they often did.

Investigate in Layers

If you scroll down to the bottom of the word page you are on in blueletterbible, you will find all the places in the respective Testament where that particular word is used. Remember, the same word will be translated in different places by more than one English word because context determines meaning.

Since the meaning of a word is in how it is used, you should start by looking at the occurrences of a word in the same book as the passage you are investigating. Your passage and the other occurrences in the book have the same situational context and so the words are more likely to be similar in meaning. If you want to approach this task scientifically, you might write down the occurrences of the word (with references) in a left hand column and then give a sense of what the word seems to mean in each instance in a right hand column. You will find a downloadable worksheet here from Dr. Smith that will guide you smoothly through this process.

Download David Smith's Word Study Worksheet

After you have looked at the occurrences in the same book, now broaden your search to places where the word occurs in writings by the same author. As we saw earlier, God inspired the authors of the Bible using their own individual styles and vocabularies. So a particular word is likely to mean similar things in other writings by the same author, remembering that someone like Paul might have had more than one secretary.

Unfortunately, most books of the Bible do not clearly have other books by the same author. In those cases, however, some material seems to go together more closely than others. For example, while Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings may not all have had the same author, God may have inspired someone to edit them into a continuous flow.

Finally, finish looking at all the other places in the same testament. Remember, Hebrew words did not have the same exact meaning as Greek words. Looking up instances of an Old Testament Hebrew word that roughly corresponds to a New Testament Greek word probably will only confuse your sense of the meaning.

If you were to take the full Bible study course with Dr. Smith, he warns against consulting English dictionaries for the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word in the Bible. An English dictionary tells you how English words are being used right now. It will not tell you how a Greek word was being used in New Testament times or how a Hebrew word was being used in Old Testament times. In some cases, we might not have a great option in English to translate a biblical word.

Create a Dictionary Entry

It can be hard to hear how a word is used in a specific verse, and sometimes the specific meaning in an individual instance can be ambiguous. Let’s say I was doing a word study on the Greek word teleios, which is sometimes translated as “perfect.” What does the word mean in Romans 12:2? It’s not entirely clear from the context other than it is clearly a good thing.

In other places, a distinct meaning shouts at you. Take 1 Corinthians 13:9-10. Verse 9 says that we know in part and prophesy in part now, but “when the perfect comes,” the partial will disappear. Clearly, the word perfect in this context has a sense of “complete” rather than partial. Write down “complete” as the meaning of the word teleios in this verse.

What about Philippians 3:15? There’s a good chance that your English translation uses the word mature to translate teleios. This is a separate, distinct meaning the word can have. Write down “mature” as the meaning of the word in this verse.

What about James 3:2? Anyone who can control their tongue is a perfect person. Frankly, the English word perfect works really well here. Write that down as a potential meaning for the word. 

If I go through all the places in the New Testament where the word teleios is used, I will find that they all pretty much fall into one of these three distinct meanings. I’m ready to make a dictionary entry:

Although we might debate the precise nuance in this or that passage, this dictionary entry seems to capture well the main definitions the Greek word teleios had, and the meaning of “mature” seems to be the most frequent one.

Return to Your Passage

Let’s say that I did this word study because I wanted to hone in on what the word teleios meant in Matthew 5:48. Most frequently, it is translated as “perfect”: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (NIV). 

However, note the context. This verse comes at the end of a series of “You have heard but I say” paragraphs. In the immediate paragraph of Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus is contrasting a partial love as opposed to a full love. God does not only love the righteous with sun and rain. God loves the whole world with sun and rain – his enemies as well as those who are his friends. 

The context seems to push us toward a sense of completeness. Don’t just love half the way (your neighbor) but not the whole way (your enemy as well). For this reason, the Common English Bible probably translates the verse the best: “Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”