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מָדָאָה

Mede

BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Mede’ fuller range ↓

H4077 Strong's Hebrew
Mâday Transliteration
/maw-dah'-ee/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 1 appearance

Compare with another word →

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.

The Hebrew name מדי centers on the idea of “Mede.” With only 1 verse it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. The word gravitates to Daniel (100%). A true hapax — its single appearance is Daniel 5:31. Dig into 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
Median
Modern gloss
Mede
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H4077 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 →

1
distinct verses
The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
1 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
Daniel 5:31
only appearance
This word occurs only once, in Daniel 5:31.
#6,101
by frequency
Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 0 · 0%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 1 · 100%

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 1 distinct verse.

  • Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 100%

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: Median 1×
  • American Standard Version: Mede 1×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mede 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H4077 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Median” 1×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H4077 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Mede” 1×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H4077 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Mede” 1×

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 2 senses and sub-senses 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.

  • 1. people, as ‘son’ of Japhet Gn 10:2 (P) = 1 Ch 1:5; as hostile power Is 13:17; 21:2; זֶרַע מָדַי Dn 9:1; land and people, מַלְכֵי מָדַי Je 25:25 (+ מַלְכֵי עֵילָם), 51:11, 28; מַלְכֵי מ׳ וּפָרַס Est 10:2; Dn 8:20; cf. פָּרַס וּמָדַי Est 1:3, 14, 18, 19; 𝔊 Μαδαι. e.g. Genesis 10:2
  • 2. of land alone = Media 2 K 17:6; 18:11 (both עָרֵי מָדָ֑י). e.g. 2 Kings 17:6

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

n.pr.gent. et terr. Medes, Media (OPers. Mâda SpAPK, Assyrian Madai COTGloss, and on Gn 10:2 DlPar. 247);—

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from מדי (Mâday) (H4075) — Mede.

Part of speech: Proper Name Masculine


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.

מָדַי

  • (b. h.) pr. n. Media. Shek. III, 4 לשום מ׳ on behalf of the Median Jews. B. Kam. IX, 5 יוליכנו אחריו (אפי׳) למ׳ he must carry it (the unlawful property) after him even as far as Media. Kidd. 71ᵇ מ׳ חולה Media is sick (doubtful as to purity of descent), v. גּוֹסֵס; Gen. R. s. 37, end; Y. Yeb. I, end, 3ᵇ; Y. Kidd. IV, 65ᵈ top מדוי (read מדיי). Esth. R. to I, 3 תשעה במ׳ nine portions (of beauty) has Media; (different in Kidd. 49ᵇ). Ab. d’R. N. ch. XXVIII עושרה של מ׳ (ed. Schechter רומי) the wealth of Media (Rome); a. fr.

מָדִי

  • (preced.) Median. Sabb. II, 1, a. e., v. נָחוּם. Yoma 11ᵇ שער המ׳ a Median gate (archway). Esth. R. to I, 22 לשון מ׳ the Median language; a. e.—Fem. מָדִית, מָדִיִּית. Ib. Kel. XXIII, 2, v. מְדוֹכָה; a. e.—Pl. מָדִיּוֹת. Esth. R. to I, 11. Sabb. VI, 6, v. פָּרַף. Y. ib. XII, 13ᶜ bot.; ib. IX, end, 12ᵇ חטים מ׳ Median wheat-grains; a. e.

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.


Bible dictionary

Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Mede). 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

(Heb. Madai), a Median or inhabitant of Media (Dan. 11:1). In Gen. 10:2 the Hebrew word occurs in the list of the sons of Japheth. But probably this is an ethnic and not a personal name, and denotes simply the Medes as descended from Japheth.

Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

Comparing translations? Open the Compare panel on any verse page to stack up to four side by side.