מָדַ֖ד ר֣וּחַ הַצָּפ֑וֹן חֲמֵשׁ מֵא֥וֹת קָנִ֛ים בִּקְנֵ֥ה הַמִּדָּ֖ה סָבִֽיב
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Ezekiel 42:17
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Ezekiel 42:17 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
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King James Version Public Domain
He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed round about.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
He measured the north side—five hundred cubits with the measuring stick.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
He measured the north side to be five hundred cubits long.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
He measured the north side to be five hundred cubits long.
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King James Version Public Domain
He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed round about.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
He measured on the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed round about.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
He measured also the Northside, fiue hundreth reedes, euen with the measuring reede rounde about.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
And he measured toward the north five hundred reeds with the measuring reed round about.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
He hath measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed round about.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
He has measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed all around.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
He measured the north side—five hundred cubits with the measuring stick.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
He measured the north side—five hundred cubits with the measuring stick.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring-reed round about.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
He measured on the north side five hundred reeds with the measuring reed all around.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed around.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
He measured the north side. It was five hundred cubits long.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
And he went round and took the measure of it on the north side with the measuring rod, five hundred, measured with the rod all round.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
He measured the north side, five hundred reeds, with the measuring reed round about.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
מָדַ֖ד
mâdad
H4058
“to measure”
Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- Appears 51× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Exodus 16:18
- Part of Speech
- Verb
- Stem
- Qal
- Form
- Perfect
- Person
- 3rd Person
- Gender
- Masculine
- Number
- Singular
Full BDB Definition
to measure, stretch
- (Qal) to measure
- (Niphal) to be measured
- (Piel)
- to extend, continue
- to measure, measure off
- (Po) measured
- (Hithpolel) to extend oneself, stretch oneself
- מָדַ֖ד mâdad H4058 “to measure” Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- ר֣וּחַ rûwach H7307 “spirit of” Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct
- הַצָּפ֑וֹן tsâphôwn H6828 “the · north” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- חֲמֵשׁ châmêsh H2568 “five” Adjective, Cardinal number, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- מֵא֥וֹת mêʼâh H3967 “hundred” Adjective, Cardinal number, Both, Plural, Absolute
- קָנִ֛ים qâneh H7070 “reeds” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute
- בִּקְנֵ֥ה qâneh H7070 “in/at · reed of” Preposition + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- הַמִּדָּ֖ה middâh H4060 “the · measure” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- סָבִֽיב çâbîyb H5439 “round about” Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 9
- words
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Prophets
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מָדַ֖ד to measure H4058 occurs in 49 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 1 verb
- 6 nouns
- 2 adjectives
Verb forms
- מָדַ֖ד Qal · Perfect
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- קָנִ֛ים reed H7070 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 21 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the Septuagint runs noticeably longer here. See the side-by-side →
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
Here the Septuagint runs noticeably longer than the Hebrew — LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) 21 words vs World English Bible 15. A rough length comparison of the two English translations, not a word-level alignment — read both below.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
καί ἐπιστρέφω πρός βορέας καί διαμετρέω ὁ κατά πρόσωπον ὁ βορέας πῆχυς πεντακόσιοι ἐν ὁ κάλαμος ὁ μέτρον
And he turned to the north and measured in front of the north side five hundred cubits with the measuring reed.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
מְשַׁח רוּחַ צִפּוּנָא חֲמֵשׁ מְאָה קְנִין בִּקְנֵי מִשְׁחֲתָא סְחוֹר סְחוֹר:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 9 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mâdad (“to measure”). The Greek Septuagint runs longer here. A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- How does “to measure” (mâdad) shape what this verse is saying?
- How does Exodus 16:18, which shares the word «to measure», read alongside this verse?
- What does the repetition of “reed” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
- The Septuagint runs longer here than the Hebrew. What might account for the difference?
- These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
- «מָדַ֖ד» is a Qal Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
- Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and John Gill's Exposition read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
- “reed” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Ezekiel 42:17 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.