How to Do a Word Study Without Knowing Greek or Hebrew

This is post five in a six-part series walking through my whole Bible study system, one piece at a time. Just landing here? Start with the overview, How to Study One Book of the Bible from Start to Finish, and work your way up.

Quick heads up before we begin. This is the deepest, most zoomed-in step in the whole system, so if you are brand new to Bible study, feel free to bookmark this one for later and keep building your chapter map habit first. It will still be here when you are ready, and there is no prize for rushing.

But if you have a few studies under your belt and you are ready to go all the way in, let's do it.

Here it is. The tiny orange mushroom.

All the way back in the first post, I told you about my friend’s photos from Wisconsin, and how the last one she sent was a single tiny orange mushroom growing out of a fallen log, so small you would step right over it if you were not looking down.

We've traveled from the view of the lake and woods, into the woods, to the log, and now we are on our knees in front of the smallest thing of all. One word.

This is a word study, and it is the closest, most zoomed-in look in the whole system.

And I know exactly what some of you are thinking, because I thought it for years: I cannot do a word study because I don't know how to deal with the Greek or Hebrew. Friend, neither did I. And now I do word studies all the time.

Let me show you how, and then let me show you what happens when we do one on the single most important word in the book of Ruth.

First, the fear, because there's nothing to be sacred of. 

You do not need to know the original languages to study a word in them. You just need to be willing to look one up, using tools other people have already built.

That's the whole secret.

Scholars who have spent their entire lives learning Hebrew and Greek have put their work into free websites and books, and all you have to do is go read what they found.

You are not translating anything. You are looking up what has already been translated, the same way you would look up a word you did not know in an English dictionary.

If you can use a dictionary, you can do a word study.

That isn't a comforting exaggeration. It's simply true.

So let go of that “I am not qualified” feeling. It is the single biggest thing standing between women and the riches sitting in a single word of Scripture, and it is not even true.

 What goes on a word study page

Let me walk you through how I build a word study, using the page I actually use.

We will do it on the word hesed, and I will explain each part as we go.

The keyword goes at the top. One word. Today, hesed. Write it big. This whole page is about this one word.

A key verse. Choose one verse that makes the meaning of the word clear, a verse where you can really see it in action. You might wait and fill this in after you have studied a bit, once you know which verse shows it best.

For hesed, I would choose Ruth 2:20, where Naomi realizes Boaz has shown kindness, that his hesed, has not forsaken the living or the dead.

Original language and transliteration. Is your word from the Old Testament or the New? For the most part, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New in Greek.

Hesed is a Hebrew word, from the Old Testament.

The transliteration is just the original word spelled out in our alphabet so we can pronounce it: hesed, sometimes written chesed, with that soft “ch” at the front.

 Definitions. Using reliable sources, you look up several definitions and write them down.

This is where a word like hesed cracks wide open, because no single English word can hold it.

You'll find things like: steadfast love. Loyal kindness. Covenant faithfulness. Mercy that keeps its promises. Devotion that shows up even when it is not required.

Notice how much bigger that is than any one of our English words for it.

Synonyms. A short list of related words, which you can gather from a thesaurus or just from seeing how different Bible translations render your word.

For hesed you might list loyalty, kindness, faithfulness, devotion, mercy, and love, and then notice that it is somehow all of them at once.

Cross-references and notes. Now you find the other places your word appears and see how it is used each time.

This is the richest part. As you go, you build what I like to call a list of truth: every time the word shows up, you jot down what you learn about it right there.

Watch what happens when we do that with hesed in Ruth.

Let’s study hesed

We've been pointing at this word since the very first post of the series, and now we finally get to hold it up to the light.

Hesed appears at three hinge moments in Ruth, and if you track it through the book, using nothing but a free tool to find it, the whole story quietly opens up.

In Ruth 1:8, Naomi, sending her daughters-in-law away, prays that the Lord would show them hesed, the same loyal kindness they showed to their dead husbands and to her.

So the very first time we meet the word, it is being asked of God.

In Ruth 2:20, after Boaz protects and provides for Ruth, Naomi bursts out that the Lord’s hesed has not forsaken the living or the dead. Here the word describes God’s faithfulness showing up through a person.

In Ruth 3:10, Boaz blesses Ruth, saying her latest hesed is greater than the first, praising her loyalty. Now the word describes a human being reflecting God back into the world.

Do you see the pattern you just uncovered? Once for God, twice for people, and every time it means the same thing: loyal love that keeps showing up when it does not have to.

And here's the truth the list hands you at the end. Every act of hesed in this book, Ruth’s loyalty, Boaz’s kindness, is a small mirror of the great hesed of God, who keeps His promises and does not forsake His people, even a bitter widow and a foreign woman with nothing to offer Him.

You could read Ruth twenty times and feel the warmth of it.

But you won't see the beams holding the whole thing up until you track that one word.

That's what a word study does. It shows you the load-bearing word, the one the writer built everything else on. 

Attributes of God and life applications. Then, just like every other page in this system, you close by writing down what this word taught you about who God is, His steadfast, promise-keeping, never-forsaking love, and one honest sentence about your own life.

For me, hesed always lands the same way: God has shown me a loyal love I didn't earn and cannot lose, so who in my life is He asking me to show that same stubborn, showing-up kind of love to?

Where to find all this

You'll need one good tool to find your word’s meaning, its original language, and its other appearances, and the good news is the best ones are free.

I keep my go-to list, the exact sites I use for word meanings, cross-references, and translations, with simple how-to steps for each, in this post: My Favorite FREE Online Resources.

If you only grab one for word studies, an interlinear or a concordance tool is what lets you click a word and see the Hebrew or Greek behind it. Start there and you'll be doing real word studies within about five minutes. 

The honest part

As always, you don't need to buy anything from me to study a word. The Keyword Journal just gives you that page already built, plus a worked example so you can see a finished one, and a running format designed to be added to over time. 

If that structure helps you actually do this, it is worth it. And FYI, the Keyword Study Journal is included in the Bible Study Binder Bundle. 

If a blank notebook is your happy place, use the notebook. 

Your next steps 

Pick one word. If you're following along, make it hesed.

Write it at the top of a page.

Look up several definitions using a free tool from my resources post, and then find the three places it appears in Ruth and write down what each one teaches you about it.

Finish with one sentence about what that stubborn, loyal love means for how you will treat someone this week.

Then sit back and look at what you have built over these five weeks.

A whole book, a chapter, a verse, and now a single word, and how every layer made the next one deeper. 

Here is the beautiful thing about a word study. It's never really finished. Every time you run across hesed again, in Psalms, in the prophets, anywhere, you can come back to that same page and add what you found. Your study of one word keeps growing for the rest of your life. That's not a chore. That's a treasure you get to keep adding to.

 

The next post is the last one in the series, and it's the one that ties everything together. We take these four tools, the overview, the chapter map, the verse map, and the word study, and put them into one place you will actually use and return to for years. That post is How to Build a Bible Study Binder You Will Actually Use. 

 

Have you ever done a word study? Are you planning to study  hesed? Let us know in the comments!