בָּכָה

קָדַר qâdar · H6937 · to grow dark, to become dark, to be darkened

Both lexemes share mourning and lamentation as one of their core senses. The target is the standard verb for weeping, while קדר has a primary sense of being dark or black that extends to mourning contexts, such as wearing mourning dress or presenting a darkened demeanor. This represents a real overlap of meaning specifically within the sphere of mourning.

אָנָה ʼânâh · H578 · to mourn, to lament, to befall

Both lexemes denote genuine grief behaviors, though with different emphases: the target emphasizes weeping and tears, while אנה emphasizes lamenting or mourning more generally. These are near-synonyms describing related but distinct expressions of grief.

אָבַל ʼâbal · H56 · to mourn, to wither, to languish

Both words belong to the sphere of grief and share overlapping senses of mourning and lamenting, as expressions of grief.

סָפַד çâphad · H5594 · to mourn

Both words are distinct Hebrew words for expressing grief or mourning that can substitute for one another in many contexts; both are actions of public or vocal grief, and "mourn" appears in both, together with "bewail," "lament," "wail" and "weep" in the same range of meaning.

κλαίω klaíō · G2799 · to weep, to wail, to lament

Greek κλαίω denotes audible weeping/wailing (explicitly contrasted with silent crying δακρύω (dakrýō, G1145) δακρύω in its own gloss), directly rendering Hebrew בָּכָה's core sense of lamenting/weeping across its range of mourning contexts.

κλαυθμός klauthmós · G2805 · to weep, to wail, to lament

κλαυθμός (klauthmós, G2805) κλαυθμός denotes the act or sound of weeping/lamentation as a noun, whereas בָּכָה (bâkâh, H1058) בָּכָה is the verbal action of weeping itself; the Greek term is the nominal form corresponding to the Hebrew verb's semantic domain.

Grieve002001002013

The verb's core sense is to weep or mourn, as Hagar 'raised her voice and wept' in Genesis 21:16 and Abraham comes 'to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her' in Genesis 23:2, fitting this domain's central meaning of grief expressed through weeping.

Words formed from the same root. They share a form, not always a meaning.

Meanings adapted from the UBS Dictionary of the Greek New Testament, © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0 and the UBS Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (from the Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew), © United Bible Societies, CC BY-SA 4.0; MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets, available at https://github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-greek/, licensed CC BY 4.0; MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets © 2022-2024 by Biblica, Inc., CC BY 4.0. Westminster Leningrad Codex (tanach.us). OpenScriptures Hebrew Bible morphology (hb.openscriptures.org), CC BY 4.0.