מַדּוּעַ
why
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
- Particle
- A short function word — article, negation, interrogative, the sign of the direct object, and the like.
Every verse where H4069 appears in the Book of Jeremiah — 16 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.
Jeremiah
- Jeremiah 2:14 מַדּ֖וּעַ ptcl inter Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born [slave]? why is he become a prey?
- Jeremiah 2:31 מַדּ֜וּעַ ptcl inter Generation, see the word of Yahweh. Have I been a wilderness to Israel? or a land of thick darkness? why say my people, We are broken loose; we will come no more to you?
- Jeremiah 8:5 מַדּ֨וּעַ ptcl inter Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return.
- Jeremiah 8:19 מַדּ֗וּעַ ptcl inter Behold, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people from a land that is very far off: isn't Yahweh in Zion? Isn't her King in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their engraved images, and with foreign vanities?
- Jeremiah 8:22 מַדּ֨וּעַ֙ ptcl inter Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there? why then isn't the health of the daughter of my people recovered?
- Jeremiah 12:1 מַדּ֗וּעַ ptcl inter Righteous are you, Yahweh, when I contend with you; yet would I reason the cause with you: why does the way of the wicked prosper? why are all they at ease who deal very treacherously?
- Jeremiah 13:22 מַדּ֖וּעַ ptcl inter If you say in your heart, Why are these things come on me? for the greatness of your iniquity are your skirts uncovered, and your heels suffer violence.
- Jeremiah 14:19 מַדּ֨וּעַ֙ ptcl inter Have you utterly rejected Judah? has your soul loathed Zion? why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of healing, and, behold, dismay!
- Jeremiah 22:28 מַדּ֤וּעַ ptcl inter Is this man Coniah a despised broken vessel? is he a vessel in which none delights? why are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into the land which they don't know?
- Jeremiah 26:9 מַדּוּעַ֩ ptcl inter Why have you prophesied in the name of Yahweh, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant? All the people were gathered to Jeremiah in the house of Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 30:6 מַדּוּעַ֩ ptcl inter Ask now, and see whether a man does travail with child: why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?
- Jeremiah 32:3 מַדּוּעַ֩ ptcl inter For Zedekiah king of Judah had shut him up, saying, Why do you prophesy, and say, Thus says Yahweh, Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it;
- Jeremiah 36:29 מַדּוּעַ֩ ptcl inter Concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, Thus says Yahweh: You have burned this scroll, saying, Why have you written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from there man and animal?
- Jeremiah 46:5 מַדּ֣וּעַ ptcl inter Why have I seen it? they are dismayed and are turned backward; and their mighty ones are beaten down, and have fled apace, and don't look back: terror is on every side, says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 46:15 מַדּ֖וּעַ ptcl inter Why are your strong ones swept away? they didn't stand, because Yahweh did drive them.
- Jeremiah 49:1 מַדּ֗וּעַ ptcl inter Of the children of Ammon. Thus says Yahweh: Has Israel no sons? has he no heir? why then does Malcam possess Gad, and his people well in the cities of it?
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.
“why” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb מדוע (maddûwaʻ). Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 26:27. It turns up in 71 verses across 19 books, a moderately common footprint. It clusters with מה, מא and מדי under a shared root. See the sense tree, 71-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4069 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 →
- 71
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 71 distinct verses.
- 19 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 19 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #550
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 550 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 71 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 71 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 48 verses · 68%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 13 verses · 18%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 10 verses · 14%
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: Wherefore 2×, Why 2×
- American Standard Version: Them 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Why 63×, Why then 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Why 61×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4069 across 6 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 H4069 across 6 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H4069 across 72 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4069 across 68 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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.
- why?, on what account?, wherefore?
Word origin
and (Ez 18, 19) מַדֻּעַ adv. wherefore? (prob. contr. from מַה־יָּדוּעַ what being known? i.e. from what motive? so Ges Ew§ 325 c Ol§ 222 f, cf. in Gk. τί μαθών;)—wherefore? on what account? Gn 26:27 מַדּוּעַ בָּאתֶם אֵלָ֑י, 40:7 Ex 1:18; 2:18; 3:3 (in an indirect question), 5:14; 18:14 Lv 10:17 Jos 17:14 (all in Hex), Ju 5:28(×28) 2 S 3:7; 11:10 etc., Is 5:4; 50:2; 63:2 (all in Is.); in Jer. 16 times, often rhetorically, after a double question introduced by הֲ … אִם, expressing affected surprise: †2:14 (v. Gf) is Israel a slave (unable to defend himself)? wherefore, then, is he become a prey? (some other cause must therefore be found for Israel’s misfortune), v 31; 8:5, 19, 22; 14:19; 22:28; 49:1, cf. 30:6; Jb 3:12; 18:3 (never in ψ).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מה (mâh) (H4100) — what.
Forms in the corpus
The 23 distinct written forms H4069 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מַדּ֖וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 3:3 | 10 |
| מַדּ֗וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 18:14 | 8 |
| מַדּוּעַ֩ | Particle, Interrogative | 2 Samuel 19:41 | 7 |
| מַדּ֛וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 2:18 | 6 |
| מַדּ֣וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 2 Samuel 13:4 | 6 |
| מַדּ֜וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 1 Samuel 20:27 | 5 |
| מַדּ֥וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 1:18 | 4 |
| מַדּ֨וּעַ֙ | Particle, Interrogative | Esther 3:3 | 4 |
| מַ֭דּוּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Job 3:12 | 3 |
| וּ/מַדּ֖וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 1 Kings 1:13 | 2 |
| וּ/מַדּ֥וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Judges 11:26 | 2 |
| וּ/מַדּ֨וּעַ֙ | Particle, Interrogative | 2 Samuel 19:43 | 2 |
| מַדּ֤וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 1 Samuel 21:1 | 2 |
| מַדּ֨וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Isaiah 50:2 | 2 |
| וּ/מַדּ֕וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 1 Kings 2:43 | 1 |
| וּ/מַדּ֛וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 2 Samuel 18:11 | 1 |
| וּ/מַדּ֜וּעַ | Adverb | Judges 11:7 | 1 |
| וּ/מַדּוּעַ֩ | Particle, Interrogative | 1 Samuel 20:2 | 1 |
| מַ֝דּ֗וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Job 21:4 | 1 |
| מַ֠דּוּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | 2 Kings 4:23 | 1 |
| מַדּ֡וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 5:14 | 1 |
| מַדּ֧וּעַ | Particle, Interrogative | Isaiah 5:4 | 1 |
| מַדֻּ֛עַ | Particle, Interrogative | Ezekiel 18:19 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4069, 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
- מא mâʼ H3964 what
- מדי madday H4078 what is enough, sufficiency, enough
- מה mâh H4101 whatever
- מהה mâhahh H4102 to delay
- מי mîy H4310 who
- מן mân H4478 manna
- מתלאה mattᵉlâʼâh H4972 weariness
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 10 — 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 65 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 71 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 26:27
- Exodus 1:18
- Leviticus 10:17
- Numbers 12:8
- Joshua 17:14
- Judges 5:28
- Ruth 2:10
- 1 Samuel 20:2
- 2 Samuel 3:7
- 1 Kings 1:6
- 2 Kings 4:23
- 2 Chronicles 24:6
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.
