Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
erets
Land, earth, country. Which one it means is usually the whole question.
Genesis 1:1, in every translation this tool compares.
He returned to his country. The whole world watched. English keeps land and earth apart. Hebrew does not.
Because the same word opens the Bible as earth and runs through the Prophets as the land, and a great many arguments about biblical geography and eschatology turn on which is meant.
Versions read earth, land, country, or ground according to context.
אֶרֶץ erets · H776
Erets is the ground, a territory, a nation's land, and the whole earth. Genesis 1:1 is usually read as the whole earth; the promises to Abraham are the land; and in the Prophets the choice between them changes the scope of a promise.
English has separate words for a plot, a country and the planet, so translators must decide a scope Hebrew leaves open.
When a translation footnote offers land as an alternative to earth, the scope of the verse is in play, not just the wording.
Earth and land are both majority renderings in their own contexts.
- erets as the whole earth: Genesis 1:1
- erets as the promised land: Genesis 12:1; 15:18
- erets as ground: Genesis 1:11
