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.
tsava
Army, host. The plural in the title LORD of Hosts.
1 Samuel 1:3, in every translation this tool compares.
Host now means someone who has you round for dinner. It used to mean an army, and the Bible is the last place most people meet the old sense.
Because the most common divine title in the Prophets is a military one, and hosts is an English word nobody uses in that sense any more.
Versions read hosts, or Almighty, or heavenly armies.
צָבָא tsava · H6635
Tsava is an army or an organised body. YHWH tsevaot is Yahweh of armies, which may mean Israel's armies, the heavenly host, or both. The Septuagint sometimes transliterates and sometimes renders it Almighty.
English hosts has drifted so far that the title reads as archaic decoration rather than as a military claim.
When a title is rendered by an English word that no longer carries its meaning, look up the noun. Titles are the last place language gets updated.
Hosts is the majority rendering; the NIV reads LORD Almighty.
- YHWH tsevaot: 1 Samuel 1:3; Isaiah 6:3
- tsava of an army: Numbers 1:3
- Septuagint kurios sabaoth and pantokrator
