מַבּוּל
flood
‘flood’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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
- 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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H3999 appears in the Book of Genesis — 11 distinct verses. 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
- Genesis 6:17 הַ/מַּבּ֥וּל ptcl def.art + n c ms I, even, I do bring the flood of waters on this earth, to destroy all flesh having the breath of life from under the sky. Everything that is in the earth will die.
- Genesis 7:6 וְ/הַ/מַּבּ֣וּל conj + ptcl def.art + n c ms Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came on the earth.
- Genesis 7:7 הַ/מַּבּֽוּל ptcl def.art + n c ms Noah went into the ark with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives, because of the waters of the flood.
- Genesis 7:10 הַ/מַּבּ֔וּל ptcl def.art + n c ms It happened after the seven days, that the waters of the flood came on the earth.
- Genesis 7:17 הַ/מַּבּ֛וּל ptcl def.art + n c ms The flood was forty days on the earth. The waters increased, and lifted up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.
- Genesis 9:11 הַ/מַּבּ֑וּל מַבּ֖וּל ptcl def.art + n c ms n c ms I will establish my covenant with you; neither will all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood; neither will there any more be a flood to destroy the earth."
- Genesis 9:15 לְ/מַבּ֔וּל prep + n c ms and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
- Genesis 9:28 הַ/מַּבּ֑וּל ptcl def.art + n c ms Noah lived three hundred fifty years after the flood.
- Genesis 10:1 הַ/מַּבּֽוּל ptcl def.art + n c ms Now this is the history of the generations of the sons of Noah and of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Sons were born to them after the flood.
- Genesis 10:32 הַ/מַּבּֽוּל ptcl def.art + n c ms These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations. Of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.
- Genesis 11:10 הַ/מַּבּֽוּל ptcl def.art + n c ms This is the history of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old, and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood.
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.
At its core, מבול (mabbûwl) means “flood.” Its uses cluster heavily in Genesis (92% of all occurrences). Spanning 12 verses in 2 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 6:17. Catalogued under 2 senses, its meaning is not single-sense. Dig into 12-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H3999 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,001
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,001 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 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 12 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 11 verses · 92%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 8%
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: Flood 11×
- American Standard Version: Flood 10×
- Berean Standard Bible: Flood 9×, Floodwaters 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Flood 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H3999 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H3999 across 13 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H3999 across 12 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H3999 across 13 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 2 senses 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.
- flood, deluge.
- Noah's flood that submerged the entire planet earth under water for about a year
Word origin
n.m. Gn 7:6 flood in time of Noah (NH id.; Jew.-Aramaic; מַבּוּלָא; Syriac ܡܳܡܽܘܠܴܐ; der. dub.; Thes al. √ יבל, but improb., v. DlProl. 122 f.; poss. old Assyrian (Bab.) loan-word (yet form unkn. in Assyrian), or from √ נבל = Assyrian nabâlu, destroy DlHWB443 f.; cf. DlPar. 156; Prol. 122 Che ψ 29, 10 crit. n., Hbr. iii. 3, 175 f., O. WhitehouseCOT ii. 293);—מ׳ only Gn and ψ 29:10; always abs. and always c. art. except Gn 9:11, 15;—וַיְהִי הַמּ׳ Gn 7:17; לֹא יִהְיֶה עוֹד מ׳ 9:11; foll. by מַיִם as appos. Gn 6:17; 7:6; מֵי הַמּ׳ Gn 7:7, 10; 9:11; לֹא־יִהְיֶה עוֹד הַמַּיִם לְמ׳ Gn 9:15; as epoch, in phr. אַחַר הַמּ׳ Gn 9:28; 10:1, 32; 11:10 (del. as gloss Bu Di); י׳ לַמּ׳ יָשָׁ֑ב ψ 29:10 י׳ at the flood sat enthroned (so most; Che v. crit. n. ‘at the storm’ (destruction = destructive storm IdHbrl.c.), but הַמּ׳ seems in all the other passages to be almost = n.pr. of the flood; cf. also מֵי נֹחַ Is 54:9(×2)).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from יבל (yâbal) (H2986) — to bring.
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.
מַבּוּל
- Del. Proleg., p. 122) decay, destruction. Gen. R. s. 100 מפני המ׳ in order to accelerate the decay (of my body in the ground; Midr. Haggad. המוחל). Snh. 108ᵇ מ׳ של אש a destruction by fire; מ׳ של מים by water; Gen. R. s. 39. Tosef. Taan. III (II), 1 מ׳ של כל בשר a destruction of all flesh (flood, Gen. IX, 11); מ׳ של בשר ed. Zuck. (Var. מ׳ של יחידים) of individuals; ib. זה הוא מַבּוּלוֹ this (drowning) is his mabbul (v. infra); מ׳ של דבר an epidemic.—Esp. (המ׳) the flood of Noah’s days. Snh. X, 3, v. דּוֹר. Gen. R. s. 31 אנשי המ׳ the men of the flood-period; a. v. fr. e.g. Genesis 9:11
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 9 distinct written forms H3999 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.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/מַּבּֽוּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:7 | 4 |
| הַ/מַּבּ֑וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 9:11 | 2 |
| הַ/מַּבּ֔וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:10 | 1 |
| הַ/מַּבּ֛וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:17 | 1 |
| הַ/מַּבּ֥וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 6:17 | 1 |
| וְ/הַ/מַּבּ֣וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 7:6 | 1 |
| לְ/מַבּ֔וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 9:15 | 1 |
| לַ/מַּבּ֣וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 29:10 | 1 |
| מַבּ֖וּל | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Genesis 9:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H3999, 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
- אובל ʼûwbâl H180 stream
- יבול yᵉbûwl H2981 produce
- יבל yᵉbal H2987 to bring
- יבל yâbâl H2988 stream
- יבל yabbêl H2990 running sore
- יובל yôwbêl H3104 ram's horn
- יובל yûwbal H3105 stream
- תבל têbêl H8398 world
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 12 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
