Bible word study

Berith (Strong’s H1285): Meaning in the Bible

Berith (בְּרִית) is the Hebrew word numbered H1285 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as a compact (because made by passing between pieces of flesh). In the King James Bible it is translated confederacy, (con-) feder(-ate), covenant, league..

• Original wordבְּרִית
• Transliterationbᵉrîyth
• Pronunciationber-eeth'
• Part of speechnoun (feminine) (n-f)
• Strong’s numberH1285
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from H1262 (in the sense of cutting [like H1254]);

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Berith appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Berith (H1285) stands behind 283 English renderings in 263 verses across 27 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Deuteronomy (27), Genesis (26), Jeremiah (24).

How the King James Bible renders Berith, by count

• covenant264 of 283 (93 percent)
• league17 of 283 (6 percent)
• confederacy1 of 283 (0 percent)
• confederate1 of 283 (0 percent)

Three places to read Berith

• Genesis 6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
• Joshua 7:15 And it shall be, that he that is taken with the accursed thing shall be burnt with fire, he and all that he hath: because he hath transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he hath wrought folly in Israel.
• Psalms 50:16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

Counts are made at build time from the King James text tagged with Strong’s numbers (eBible.org, public domain). Verses are read from the stored King James text, never typed.

And Christ

A covenant is a bond God binds himself to keep. Christians believe the promises run through the whole story to a new covenant sealed in the blood of Jesus, God binding himself to his people forever.

The lexical data on this page comes from the public-domain Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890), a Hebrew and Greek dictionary keyed to the King James Bible. It is a reference tool, not a settled verdict: no single word decides a doctrine, and meaning is finally shaped by how a word is used in its sentences. Read the passages themselves, prayerfully, and in full.

Related words