מָגוֹג
Magog
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Magog’ fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Noun type
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H4031 appears — 4 distinct verses across 3 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 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Ezekiel 2 verses
- Ezekiel 38:2 הַ/מָּג֔וֹג ptcl def.art + n Proper Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him,
- Ezekiel 39:6 בְּ/מָג֔וֹג prep + n Proper I will send a fire on Magog, and on those who dwell securely in the isles; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.
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, מגוג (Mâgôwg) means “Magog.” It occurs a mere 4 verses across Scripture. The word gravitates to Ezekiel (50%), then Genesis and 1 Chronicles. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 10:2. Dig into 4-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4031 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.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 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 →
Most concentrated in
- Ezekiel 2 verses 50%
- Genesis 1 verse 25%
- 1 Chronicles 1 verse 25%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 50%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 25%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 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).
- King James Version: Magog 4×
- American Standard Version: Magog 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Magog 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Magog 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4031 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4031 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4031 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4031 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 3 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.
- Magog = "land of Gog"
- the 2nd son of Japheth, grandson of Noah, and progenitor of several tribes northward from Israel (noun proper masculine)
- the mountainous region between Cappadocia and Media and habitation of the descendants of Magog…
Word origin
מָגוֹג n.pr.terr. (= land of Gog ?)—a son of Japhet
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from גוג (Gôwg) (H1463) — Gog.
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.
מָגוֹג
- (b. h.) pr. n. gent. Magog, גוג ומ׳ Gog and Magog, the two allied nations, the defeat of which, it is believed, will precede the redemption of Israel (v. Ez. XXXVIII, sq.). Eduy. II, 10 משפט ג׳ ומ׳ וכ׳ the judgment of Gog and Magog in the Messianic days will last twelve months. Ber. 13ᵃ מלחמת גוג ומ׳ the war with G. a. M. Snh. 95ᵇ; a. fr.
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 3 distinct written forms H4031 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/מָג֔וֹג | Noun, Proper | Genesis 10:2 | 2 |
| בְּ/מָג֔וֹג | Noun, Proper | Ezekiel 39:6 | 1 |
| הַ/מָּג֔וֹג | Noun, Proper | Ezekiel 38:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4031, 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
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 → 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Magog). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Region of Gog, the second of the "sons" of Japheth (Gen. 10:2; 1 Chr. 1:5). In Ezekiel (38:2; 39:6) it is the name of a nation, probably some Scythian or Tartar tribe descended from Japheth. They are described as skilled horsemen, and expert in the use of the bow. The Latin father Jerome says that this word denotes "Scythian nations, fierce and innumerable, who live beyond the Caucasus and the Lake Maeotis, and near the Caspian Sea, and spread out even onward to India." Perhaps the name "represents the Assyrian Mat Gugi, or country of Gugu,' the Gyges of the Greeks" (Sayce's Races, etc.).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(region of Gog). In (Genesis 10:2) Magog appears as the second son of Japheth; in (Ezekiel 38:2; 39:1,6) it appears as a country or people of which Gog was the prince. The notices of Magog would lead us to fix a northern locality: it is expressly stated by Ezekiel that "he was to come up from the sides of the north," (Ezekiel 39:2) from a country adjacent to that of Togarmah or Armenia, ch. 58:6 and not far from "the isles" or maritime regions of Europe. ch. (Ezekiel 39:6) The people of Magog further appear as having a force of cavalry, (Ezekiel 38:16) and as armed with the bow. ch. (Ezekiel 39:3) From the above data, may conclude that Magog represents the important race of the Scythians.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
covering; roof; dissolving
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
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.
