Bible word study

Mishpat (Strong’s H4941): Meaning in the Bible

Mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט) is the Hebrew word numbered H4941 in Strong’s concordance of the Bible. Strong’s defines it as properly, a verdict (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially, especially a sentence or formal decree (human or (participant's) divine law, individual or collective), including the act, the place, the suit, the crime, and the penalty; abstractly, justice, including a participant's right or privilege (statutory or customary), or even a style. In the King James Bible it is translated adversary, ceremony, charge, custom, desert.

מִשְׁפָּט
mishpâṭ · Hebrew
Strong’s H4941 · mish-pawt'

The full Strong’s definition

properly, a verdict (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially, especially a sentence or formal decree (human or (participant's) divine law, individual or collective), including the act, the place, the suit, the crime, and the penalty; abstractly, justice, including a participant's right or privilege (statutory or customary), or even a style

Derivation. from H8199;

How the King James Bible translates it

adversary, ceremony, charge, × crime, custom, desert, determination, discretion, disposing, due, fashion, form, to be judged, judgment, just(-ice, -ly), (manner of) law(-ful), manner, measure, (due) order, ordinance, right, sentence, usest, × worthy, wrong. (The × marks places where the word shapes the phrasing rather than being rendered by a single English word.)

Why the word matters

Every word the biblical writers chose carries weight. Studying Mishpat 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

Shaphat (root, H8199)All Bible word studies

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