מָגֵן
shield
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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
- Both
- Attested as both masculine and feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H4043 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 3 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.
1 Kings
- 1 Kings 10:17 מָֽגִנִּים֙ הַ/מָּגֵ֣ן n c bp ptcl def.art + n c bs [he made] three hundred shields of beaten gold; three minas of gold went to one shield: and the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon.
- 1 Kings 14:26 מָגִנֵּ֣י n c bp cs and he took away the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all: and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made.
- 1 Kings 14:27 מָגִנֵּ֖י n c bp cs King Rehoboam made in their place shields of brass, and committed them to the hands of the captains of the guard, who kept the door of the king's house.
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.
מגן — transliterated mâgên — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “shield.” It first appears in Genesis 15:1. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 60 verses — moderately common. More than a quarter of its appearances fall in Psalms. Related forms include גנן, גן and מגן. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4043 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 →
- 60
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 60 distinct verses.
- 18 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 18 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #611
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 611 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 60 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Psalms 19 verses 32%
- 2 Chronicles 9 verses 15%
- Ezekiel 5 verses 8%
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 60 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 37 verses · 62%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 21 verses · 35%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 3%
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: Shield 27×, Shields 13×, Bucklers 3×
- American Standard Version: Shield 31×, Shields 7×, He is a shield 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Shield 29×, Shields 16×, Is a shield 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Shield 30×, Shields 11×, Shields of 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4043 across 63 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H4043 across 63 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 H4043 across 61 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4043 across 61 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.
- shield, buckler
Word origin
n.m. 1 K 14:27, & f. 1 K 10:17, shield (Arabic مِجَنٌّ, Aramaic מְגִנָּא, ܡܓܶܢܳܐ )—מָגֵן Gn 15:1 + 33 times (also cstr. Dt 33:29 Na 2:4); sf. מָגִנִּי ψ 7:11 + 5 times; מָגִנֵּנוּ ψ 33:20 + 3 times; מָגִנָּם ψ 115:9, 10, 11; pl. מָגִנִּים 1 K 10:17 + 6 times; מָגִנּוֹת 2 Ch 23:9; cstr. מָגִנֵּי 1 K 14:26 + 4 times; sf. מָגִנָּיו Jb 15:26; מָגִנֶּיהָ Ho 4:18;—shield, buckler, carried by warrior for defence Ju 5:8 2 S 1:21(×2) 2 K 19:32 = Is 37:33, 1 Ch 5:18; 2 Ch 14:7; 17:17; 23:9; 26:14; 32:5 Ne 4:10 ψ 76:4 Je 46:3, 9 Ez 23:24; 38:4, 5; 39:9 Na 2:4 Is 22:6 cf. 21:5 (anoint the shield, to make it slippery), so also ψ 35:2 (where י׳ fig. as warrior); אִישׁ מָגֵן = armed man Pr 6:11; 24:34; laid up for show, or as treasure 1 K 10:17(×2); 14:26, 27 (= 2 Ch 9:16(×2); 12:9, 10) 2 Ch 32:27 cf. Ct 4:4 Ez 27:10; of scales of crocodile (leviathan) אֲפִיקֵי מָגִנִּים Jb 41:7; fig. of wicked’s defence against judgments of י׳, עֲבִי גַבֵּי מָגִנָּיו Jb 15:26; fig. of king ψ 89:19 (cf. Che); fig. of rulers of Ephraim Ho 4:18; fig. of rulers of earth ψ 47:10; fig. (very often) of י׳, as defence of his servants, ψ 3:4; 7:11 (read מָגִנִּי עָלַי אל׳ cf. Che crit. note) 18:3, 31, 36 (= 2 S 22:3, 31, 36) 28:7; 33:20; 59:12; 84:10, 12; 115:9, 10, 11; 119:114; 144:2 Pr 2:7; 30:5, and v. especially Gn 15:1 (E).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from גנן (gânan) (H1598) — to defend.
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.
מָגֵן
- shield, defense. Pesik. Haʿomer, p. 70ᵃ; 70ᵇ (ref. to ואל מצנים, Job V, 5) לא בזיין ולא במ׳ not with weapon or with shield (will he prevail); Lev. R. s. 28; Pesik. R. s. 18; Yalk. Job 898.—Cant. R. to IV, 4 end (ref. to אלף המגן, ib.) אלף דור … אותו המ׳ I folded together (skipped over) a thousand generations and brought unto them that shield (the Torah).—Midr. Till. to Ps. I, 5, v. גּוּן; a. fr.—Pl. מָגִנִּים, מָגִינִּים. Lam. R. introd. (R. Joḥ. 1) (ref. to Is. XXII, 5) שהיו מקרקרים … עושין אותן מ׳ they broke down the walls of their houses and made of them defenses. Cant. R. l. c. לבניך אני נעשה מ׳ הרבה unto thy children I shall be many defenses. Gen. R. s. 44 מ׳ של צדיקים shields of the righteous (protectors of their generation by dint of their righteousness); a. e.—Esp. Magen, the first section of the Prayer of Benedictions closing with מָגֵן אַבְרָהָם (usu. called אָבוֹת, v. אָב). Deut. R. s. 11, beg. חוזר לתחלת מ׳ (Ber. 34ᵃ לראש) he must go back to the beginning of the first section. Erub. 65ᵃ, v. פּוּק h.—בֵּית הַמָּגִינִּין, Tosef. Kil. IV, 7, v. מְגִינָּא. e.g. Job 5:5
מְגָן
- v. מַגִּין
מַגָּן
- (גְּנַן; cmp. חִנָּם fr. חָנַן) grace, undeserved gift; (adv. with or without prepos.) for nothing, in vain. Targ. Prov. XV, 27.—Targ. Gen. XXIX, 15. Targ. Ex. XX, 7; Targ. Deut. V, 11; a. e.—Y. Bicc. III, 65ᶜ bot. לא מ׳ מאריך ימים it is not for nothing that he has been allowed a long life. B. Kam. 85ᵃ אסיא דמ׳ a physician (that will cure thee) without pay; אסיא דמ׳ כמ׳ שוי Ms. M. a. oth. (ed. incorr., v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note) a physician without pay is worth as much as unpaid service can be expected to be, i.e. an unpaid physician is likely to be careless. Y. Snh. X, 29ᵃ bot. אפי׳ על מ׳ even if the curse has been pronounced gratuitously (without cause), cmp. קללת חנם s. v. חִנָּם.
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 39 distinct written forms H4043 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 H4043, 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
Derived from this word
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 6 — 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 51 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 60 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 15:1
- Deuteronomy 33:29
- Judges 5:8
- 2 Samuel 1:21
- 1 Kings 10:17
- 2 Kings 19:32
- 1 Chronicles 5:18
- 2 Chronicles 9:16
- Job 15:26
- Psalms 3:3
- Proverbs 2:7
- Song of Solomon 4:4
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.
