מְדִינָה
province
‘province’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Absolute-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
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
12 verses where H4082 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Esther. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Esther
- Esther 1:16 מְדִינ֖וֹת n c fp cs Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen has not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the peoples who are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus.
- Esther 1:22 מְדִינ֣וֹת מְדִינָ֤ה וּ/מְדִינָה֙ n c fp cs n c fs conj + n c fs for he sent letters into all the king's provinces, into every province according to the writing of it, and to every people after their language, that every man should bear rule in his own house, and should speak according to the language of his people.
- Esther 2:3 מְדִינ֣וֹת n c fp cs and let the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom, that they may gather together all the beautiful young virgins to Shushan the palace, to the house of the women, to the custody of Hegai the king's chamberlain, keeper of the women; and let their things for purification be given them;
- Esther 3:8 מְדִינ֣וֹת n c fp cs Haman said to king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; and their laws are diverse from [those of] every people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to allow them.
- Esther 3:13 מְדִינ֣וֹת n c fp cs Letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even on the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.
- Esther 4:11 מְדִינ֨וֹת n c fp cs All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whoever, whether man or woman, shall come to the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law for him, that he be put to death, except those to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.
- Esther 8:5 מְדִינ֥וֹת n c fp cs She said, If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king's provinces:
- Esther 8:12 מְדִינ֖וֹת n c fp cs on one day in all the provinces of king Ahasuerus, [namely], on the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar.
- Esther 9:2 מְדִינוֹת֙ n c fp cs the Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them was fallen on all the peoples.
- Esther 9:12 מְדִינ֥וֹת n c fp cs The king said to Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and the ten sons of Haman; what then have they done in the rest of the king's provinces! Now what is your petition? and it shall be granted you: or what is your request further? and it shall be done.
- Esther 9:16 בִּ/מְדִינ֨וֹת prep + n c fp cs The other Jews who were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and killed of those who hated them seventy-five thousand; but they didn't lay their hand on the spoil.
- Esther 9:20 מְדִינוֹת֙ n c fp cs Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both near and far,
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.
מדינה (mᵉdîynâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “province.” Esther dominates its distribution — 26 of 40 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 40 verses — moderately common. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. Its English rendering has broadened — “provinces” classically, “province” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4082 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 →
- 40
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 40 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #709
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 709 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 40 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 40 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 35 verses · 88%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 13%
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: Provinces 19×, Every province 8×, Province 7×
- American Standard Version: Provinces 13×, Every province 8×, Province 7×
- Berean Standard Bible: Provinces 22×, Province 12×, District 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Province 24×, Provinces of 11×, Provinces 10×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4082 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4082 across 44 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4082 across 44 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 9 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4082 across 53 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.
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 4 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. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. districts of realm of Ahab with שׂרים over them 1 K 20:14, 15, 17, 19. e.g. 1 Kings 20:14
- 2. of the Babylonian empire: Ez 19:8; Dn 8:2 (of Elam); שָׂרָתִי בַּמְּדִינוֹת princess among the provinces La 1:1 (of Judea). e.g. Ezekiel 19:8
- 3. of the Persian empire Est 1:1 + often; one of which was Palestine, Ne 1:3; the returning exiles, בְּנֵי הַמְּדִינָה children of the province Ezr 2:1 Ne 7:6, having רָאשֵׁי הַמְּדִינָה Ne 11:3. e.g. Esther 1:1
- 4. provinces in general Ec 2:8; 5:7; בְּמִשְׁמַנֵּי מְדִינָה in the fat places of the province Dn 11:24 (fertile regions, prob. Egypt; other trans. vid. in Bev.) e.g. Ecclesiastes 2:8
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.f. province (an Aramaic word, cf. Syriac ܡܕܝܺܢܻܬܳܐ, Arabicمَدِينَةٌ city) cf. also Old Aramaic מדינתא city, Palm. מדיתא city, sf. מדיתהון, pl. מדינתא SAC70 Lzb306 Cooke 266. Est 1:1 + 28 times; pl. מְדִינוֹת 1 K 20:14 + 23 times;—a district of an empire,
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from דין (dîyn) (H1777) — to judge.
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.
דִּינָה
- (b. h.) Dinah, daughter of Jacob. B. Bath. 15ᵇ; a. fr.
מְדִינָה
- [jurisdiction,] district, country. Maas. Sh. III, 4 (contrad. to Jerusalem). R. Hash. IV, 3; Succ. III, 12 (contrad. to the Sanctuary); a. fr.—In gen. province; large town, capital. Pes. 51ᵃ כל המ׳ all the people of the place. Gen. R. s. 50, end, v. עִירוֹנִי. Esth. R. to I, 1 כל מקום שנ׳ … עיר מ׳ מ׳ אפרכיה wherever ʿir is used in the Scriptures, it means a capital, wherever m’dinah is used, it means an hyparchia (province); 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 32 distinct written forms H4082 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 H4082, 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 8 — 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 36 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 40 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.
