מַאֲכָל
food
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 22 times (73%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 8 times (27%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 30 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H3978 appears — 29 distinct verses across 18 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Genesis 4 verses
- Genesis 2:9 לְ/מַאֲכָ֑ל prep + n c ms Out of the ground Yahweh God made every tree to grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
- Genesis 3:6 לְ/מַאֲכָ֜ל prep + n c ms When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit of it, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.
- Genesis 6:21 מַֽאֲכָל֙ n c ms Take with you of all food that is eaten, and gather it to you; and it will be for food for you, and for them."
- Genesis 40:17 מַאֲכַ֥ל n c ms cs In the uppermost basket there was all kinds of baked food for Pharaoh, and the birds ate them out of the basket on my head."
Leviticus 1 verse
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 20:20 מַאֲכָל֙ n c ms Only the trees of which you know that they are not trees for food, you shall destroy and cut them down; and you shall build bulwarks against the city that makes war with you, until it fall.
- Deuteronomy 28:26 לְ/מַאֲכָ֔ל prep + n c ms Your dead body shall be food to all birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth; and there shall be none to frighten them away.
Judges 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
2 Chronicles 2 verses
- 2 Chronicles 9:4 וּ/מַאֲכַ֣ל conj + n c ms cs and the food of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their clothing, his cup bearers also, and their clothing, and his ascent by which he went up to the house of Yahweh; there was no more spirit in her.
- 2 Chronicles 11:11 מַאֲכָ֖ל n c ms He fortified the strongholds, and put captains in them, and stores of food, and oil and wine.
Ezra 1 verse
Nehemiah 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 3 verses
- Psalms 44:11 מַאֲכָ֑ל n c ms You have made us like sheep for food, And have scattered us among the nations.
- Psalms 74:14 מַ֝אֲכָ֗ל n c ms You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces. You gave him as food to people and desert creatures.
- Psalms 79:2 מַ֭אֲכָל n c ms They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, The flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Jeremiah 4 verses
- Jeremiah 7:33 לְ/מַֽאֲכָ֔ל prep + n c ms The dead bodies of this people shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth; and none shall frighten them away.
- Jeremiah 16:4 לְ/מַאֲכָ֔ל prep + n c ms They shall die grievous deaths: they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung on the surface of the ground; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth.
- Jeremiah 19:7 לְ/מַֽאֲכָ֔ל prep + n c ms I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life: and their dead bodies will I give to be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth.
- Jeremiah 34:20 לְ/מַֽאֲכָ֔ל prep + n c ms I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life; and their dead bodies shall be for food to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the earth.
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 4:10 וּ/מַאֲכָֽלְ/ךָ֙ conj + n c ms cs + sfx pers 2ms Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shall you eat it.
- Ezekiel 47:12 מַ֠אֲכָל לְ/מַֽאֲכָ֔ל n c ms prep + n c ms By the river on the bank of it, on this side and on that side, shall grow every tree for food, whose leaf shall not wither, neither shall the fruit of it fail: it shall bring forth new fruit every month, because the waters of it issue out of the sanctuary; and the fruit of it shall be for food, and the leaf of it for healing.
Daniel 1 verse
Habakkuk 1 verse
Haggai 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“food” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מאכל (maʼăkâl). Where the King James Version says “meat,” newer translations reach for “food” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 29 verses — moderately common. First canonically at Genesis 2:9, it enters the text early. It shares a root with אכל, אכילה and אכל. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3978 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 29
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 29 distinct verses.
- 18 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 18 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,139
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,139 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 29 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 29 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 38%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 11 verses · 38%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 7 verses · 24%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Meat 11×, Be meat 4×, Food 4×
- American Standard Version: Food 14×, Be food 3×, Shall be food 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Food 21×, Fruit 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Food 24×, Food of 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3978 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3978 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3978 across 29 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3978 across 30 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- food, fruit, meat
Word origin
n.m. Ju 14:14 (f. Hb 1:16) food—מ׳ Gn 2:9 + 21 textual; cstr. מַאֲכַל Gn 40:7 + 3 textual; sf. מַאֲכָֽלְךָ Ez 4:10; מַאֲכָלוֹ Hb 1:16; מַאֲכָלָהּ Pr 6:8; מַאֲכַלְכֶם Dn 1:10—food, in genl. Gn 6:21 1 K 10:5 = 2 Ch 9:4 Hg 2:12; opp. drink Ezr 3:7 2 Ch 11:11 Dn 1:10; מַאֲכַל תַּאֲוָה Jb 33:20; fig. of peoples as fishes, food for Chaldeans Hb 1:16; appl. to fruit Gn 2:9; 3:6 (of tree טוֹב לְמ׳) cf. עֵץ־מ׳ Lv 19:23 Dt 20:20 Ne 9:25 Ez 47:12(×2); appl. to דָּגָן Is 62:8 appl.; to honey Ju 14:14; to flour 1 Ch 12:40(41), appos. קֶמַח; to food of ants Pr 6:8 (‖ לָחֶם); to baker’s work Gn 40:17 cf. Ez 4:10; appl. to carcasses, as food for beasts & birds of prey Dt 28:26 ψ 79:2 cf. 44:12 (צֹאן מ׳, sim. of suffering people) Je 7:33; 16:4; 19:7; 34:20 ψ 74:14.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from אכל (ʼâkal) (H398) — to eat.
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
מַאֲכָל
- food; meal; meal-time. Sabb. 10ᵃ; Pes. 12ᵇ מַאֲכַל לודים, v. לוּדִים. Ber. 40ᵃ אסור … עד שיתן מ׳ לבהמתו a person is forbidden to eat before giving food to his animal. Taan. 20ᵃ מ׳ אדם food fit for human beings; a. fr.—[Y. Ḥag. II, end, 78ᶜ אפי׳ מ׳ אפי׳ כסות, read: אפי׳ מובל אפי׳ כפות, v. יָבַל.]—Pl. מַאֲכָלוֹת. Gen. R. s. 20 שתהא אוכל מ׳ כאדם that thou shouldst eat food like human beings; (Tosef. Sot. IV, 17 מעדנים, Var. מאכל אדם).
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 21 distinct written forms H3978 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3978, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Shares the same root
- אכילה ʼăkîylâh H396 food
- אכל ʼăkal H399 to eat
- אכל ʼôkel H400 food
- מאכלת maʼăkeleth H3979 knife
- מאכלת maʼăkôleth H3980 fuel
- מכלת makkôleth H4361 food
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 27 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 29 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
- Genesis 2:9
- Leviticus 19:23
- Deuteronomy 20:20
- Judges 14:14
- 1 Kings 10:5
- 1 Chronicles 12:40
- 2 Chronicles 9:4
- Ezra 3:7
- Job 33:20
- Psalms 44:11
- Proverbs 6:8
- Isaiah 62:8
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
