מָאֵן
refusing
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H3986 appears — 4 distinct verses across 2 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.
Exodus 3 verses
- Exodus 8:2 מָאֵ֥ן Piel ptcp.act ms If you refuse to let them go, behold, I will plague all your borders with frogs:
- Exodus 9:2 מָאֵ֥ן Piel ptcp.act ms For if you refuse to let them go, and hold them still,
- Exodus 10:4 מָאֵ֥ן Piel ptcp.act ms Or else, if you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country,
Jeremiah 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.
מאן (mâʼên) is a Hebrew adjective most often rendered “refusing.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 4 verses. Exodus dominates its distribution — 3 of 4 verses. It first appears in Exodus 8:2. Sharing its root, it stands alongside מאן and מאן. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3986 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
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 4 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 75%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 25%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Thou refuse 4×
- American Standard Version†: Thou refuse 4×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Refuse 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Refuse 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3986 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H3986 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3986 across 4† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3986 across 3† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 1 sense the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
מאן I Pi. refuse (Qal perhaps be distasteful, cf. Syriac ܡܶܐܢ taeduit, piguit, Aph. be slothful
Piel
- Pf. מֵאֵן Ex 7:14 + 4 times; fs. מֵאֲנָה Je 15:18 + 3 times; מֵאַנְתָּ Ex 10:3, etc.; Impf. יְמָאֵן Ex 22:16; וַיְמָאֵן Gn 37:35 + 8 times etc.; Inf. abs. מָאֵן Ex 22:16;—refuse, (sq. ל with inf. except 6 times) human subj. Gn 37:35 (J), Je 31:15; Ex 22:16(×2) Nu 20:21; 22:14 (all E), Dt 25:7; 1 S 8:19; 2 S 2:23; 13:9; 1 K 20:35; 21:15 Est 1:12; Je 50:33 cf. Jb 6:7 ψ 77:3 Pr 21:25 Je 15:18; without Inf. וַיְמָאֵן וַיֹּאמֶר Gn 39:8; 48:19 (both J), 1 S 28:23; also 2 K 5:16; especially of refusing to obey י׳’s commands Ex 4:23; 7:14; 10:3; 16:28 (all J), Ne 9:17; also ψ 78:10 Pr 21:7; Ho 11:5, v. especially Je 3:3; 5:3(×2); 8:5; 9:5; 11:10 cf. 25:28, Zc 7:11; without Inf. = be recusant Pr 1:24; Is 1:20; once subj. י׳ Nu 22:13 (E). e.g. Exodus 7:14
מאן II verb. refusing, sq. Inf., and always of disobeying י׳
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
I. vb. Pi. refuse (Qal perhaps be distasteful, cf. Syriac ܡܶܐܢ taeduit, piguit, Aph. be slothful; NH Pi., as term. techn. of girl, refuse to acknowledge marriage contract; poss. akin to Ethiopic መነነ reject; Arabic مَأَنَ is sustain, maintain);—
II. adj.verb. refusing, sq. Inf., and always of disobeying י׳; Ex 7:27; 9:2; 10:4 (all J), Je 38:21.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מאן (mâʼên) (H3985) — to refuse.
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.
מַאן
- (cmp. מָא) who?, what?, which?; (relat.) who, which. [Targ. מַן.] Sabb. 57ᵃ, a. fr. מ׳ דכר וכ׳, v. דְּכַר I. Yeb. 107ᵇ מ׳ לא הודו לו who is meant by ‘they did not agree with him’? Ib., a. fr. מ׳ תנא who is the authority for the law just quoted?, i.e. whose opinion is here represented?—Ḥull. 50ᵃ אמר מ׳ דהו somebody said; Bets. 27ᵃ; M. Kat. 22ᵃ; (Nidd. 48ᵃ ר׳ זירא). Y. Kil. IX, 32ᵇ פוק חזי מ׳ בעי וכ׳ go out and see who it is that wants thee outside (an intimation of a teacher’s displeasure); Gen. R. s. 33 (some ed. מַן). Ber. 30ᵇ; Ḥull. 7ᵃ חזי מ׳ גברא וכ׳ see how great a man gives testimony about him. Y. Maas. Sh. II, 53ᵇ bot. מ׳ דאמר וכ׳ according to him who says &c.; a. v. fr.—V. מַן.
מָאַן
- , Pi. מֵיאֵן, מֵאֵן (b. h.; v. אֵין) to deny, refuse, esp.
- 1. (of a woman betrothed in childhood, on arriving at majority) to protest against, to annul one’s marriage. Yeb. XIII, 1 אין מְמָאֲנִין אלא ארוסות only betrothed (not married) women may have their obligation cancelled. Ib. מְמָאֶנֶת והיא קטנה וכ׳ she may protest (have her marriage cancelled) even while yet a minor, and even four or five times in succession. Ib. 2 איזו … שצריכה למָאֵן what minor is bound to make declaration (before leaving her husband)?—Ib. 4 הממאנת באיש וכ׳ if a woman refuses her husband by declaration, he is permitted to marry her kindred (who otherwise would be forbidden to him); a. v. fr.
- 2. to advise a protest. Eduy. VI, 1 שמְמָאֲנִים וכ׳ that the court eventually advises women married as minors to protest; Nidd. 8ᵃ; Ber. 27ᵃ.—V. מִיאוּן.
מָאן
- (v. preced.) [thing,]
- 1. vessel, utensil. Targ. Ps. II, 9. Targ. Lev. XI, 33; a. fr. (interch. with מָן, מַן).—B. Kam. 17ᵇ מ׳ תבירא תבר it was a broken vessel he broke. Ib. בתר תבר מ׳ אזלינן we judge by the final cause by which the vessel was broken; a. v. fr.—Pl. מָאנִין, מָאנַיָּא, מָאנֵי, מָנ׳. Targ. Ex. XI, 2; a. fr.—Sabb. 105ᵇ תבר מ׳ תבירי broke broken vessels (pretending to be angry); a. fr.
- 2. (cmp. כֶּלִי) garment, dress. Ib. 113ᵇ; Snh. 94ᵃ קרי למָאנֵיה וכ׳ called his dress (garments) &c., v. כָּבֵד I; B. Kam. 91ᵇ למאני (corr. acc.; v. Rabb. D. S. a. l.).—B. Mets. 47ᵃ במ׳ דכשר למקני ביה (symbolical possession has been given) by means of a garment fit for the purpose; a. fr.—Pl. as ab. Ber. 6ᵃ. Y. Kil. IX, 32ᵇ top; Y. Keth. XII, 35ᵃ top מָאנוֹי, v. בְּזַע; a. fr.
- 3. (= h. קַנְקַן) [handle,] coulter of the plough. B. Mets. 80ᵃ
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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3986, 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
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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
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.
