How can doing a word study be helpful in understanding the Bible?

from the old testament

• Joshua 1:8 indicates that keeping God’s Word close to us is incredibly important. As believers, we do well to understand, obey, and apply it to our daily lives. Word studies can help us fulfill this mission because we can better understand God’s Word within the language it was originally written in.
• Psalm 1:1-2 says, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” We should delight ourselves in God’s Word, and doing word studies can help us comprehend God’s message with more biblical accuracy.

from the new testament

• We do well to take after the Bereans (Acts 17:11), who did not merely accept what teachers preached to them, but actually studied the Scriptures for themselves to make sure the teachings were truly biblical. In word studies, we can do something similar—-not merely reading words on a page and assuming we understand them, but pursuing a broader understanding of a passage.
• Studying key words and their usages in the Bible can enhance our understanding of God's Word as a whole. While the Bible is the "living" Word of God (Hebrews 4:12), it is made up of words written in literary form, so we must keep this in mind while we are conducting word studies so as to interpret their meanings correctly.
• Knowing the Hebrew/Greek meanings of the word and looking the words up in other passages can aid us in our mission to rightly handle the “word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

implications for today

A challenge of studying Scripture is that it was not originally written in modern languages, so everything we read today is a translation from the original text. Translators sometimes struggle to find the best word when one language uses one word to convey several different ideas but the other language uses several different words or vice versa. An important step in doing a word study is to find other places in the Bible where that same word in the original text appears. Doing this helps us derive a better understanding of the meaning of the word in its proper context. For instance, the word "helper," used to describe Adam's need for God to create Eve, is the word ezer in Hebrew (Genesis 2:20), which is used nineteen other times in the Old Testament, referring to the help God gives in times of desperate need. Understanding the meaning of certain words can shed new light on passages of God’s Scripture and ultimately help us have a better understanding of what the Holy Spirit is communicating to readers. A wonderful word study tool is a study Bible, which may include a concordance in the back to help find other passages using the same word. Concordances also tend to include footnotes throughout the Scriptures giving helpful insights into words and their meanings. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words and Strong's Concordance are also helpful books. For those of us who prefer online sources, BlueLetterBible.org is a recommended website for word studies. Additionally, while it is not focused on word study specifically, BibleRef.com provides helpful verse-by-verse commentary.