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.
yad
Hand, and with it power, agency and control.
Exodus 13:3, in every translation this tool compares.
The matter is in your hands. Nobody is holding anything. English does this and hears nothing strange in it.
Because a mighty hand and an outstretched arm are not decorative; they are the ordinary Hebrew way of saying power, and English has the same idiom without noticing it is one.
Versions read hand, and power or control where the idiom would be confusing.
יָד yad · H3027
Yad is the hand and by extension strength, authority and possession. Into the hand of means into the power of. It also forms prepositions, as body-part nouns regularly do in Hebrew.
The English metaphor lines up, so most of the range survives translation intact.
When a Hebrew idiom works in English, that is worth noticing too. It means the metaphor is shared and you can trust your instinct on it.
Hand is the majority rendering by a wide margin.
- a mighty hand: Exodus 13:3; Deuteronomy 26:8
- into the hand of: Judges 2:14
- yad as a monument or memorial: 1 Samuel 15:12
