Bible word study

Yam (Strong’s H3220): Meaning in the Bible

Yam (יָם) is the Hebrew word numbered H3220 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as a sea (as breaking in noisy surf) or large body of water; specifically (with the article), the Mediterranean Sea; sometimes a large river, or an artifical basin; locally, the west, or (rarely) the south. In the King James Bible it is translated (-shore)), south, west (-ern, side, -ward)..

• Original wordיָם
• Transliterationyâm
• Pronunciationyawm
• Part of speechnoun (masculine) (n-m)
• Strong’s numberH3220
• LanguageHebrew

The full Strong’s definition

Derivation. from an unused root meaning to roar;

How the King James Bible translates it

Where Yam appears in the Bible

In the King James Bible’s text tagged with Strong’s numbers, Yam (H3220) stands behind 396 English renderings in 339 verses across 35 of the 66 books. It is most frequent in Ezekiel (60), Joshua (52), Exodus (39).

How the King James Bible renders Yam, by count

• sea297 of 396 (75 percent)
• west47 of 396 (12 percent)
• seas24 of 396 (6 percent)
• westward21 of 396 (5 percent)
• side4 of 396 (1 percent)
• men1 of 396 (0 percent)

Three places to read Yam

• Genesis 1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
• Judges 5:17 Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships? Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches.
• Isaiah 48:18 O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea:

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.

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Yam in the original Hebrew lets you read the passages where it appears more carefully, closer to what the first hearers understood, so the meaning is drawn from the text itself rather than from the English alone.

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