מַדָּע
knowledge
‘knowledge’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
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
- 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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4093 appears in the Book of Daniel — 2 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.
Daniel
- Daniel 1:4 מַדָּ֔ע n c ms youths in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and endowed with knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability to stand in the king's palace; and that he should teach them the learning and the language of the Chaldeans.
- Daniel 1:17 מַדָּ֥ע n c ms Now as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.
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.
מדע — transliterated maddâʻ — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “knowledge.” Its uses cluster heavily in 2 Chronicles (50% of all occurrences). Spanning 6 verses in 3 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is 2 Chronicles 1:10. The lexicon spreads it across several senses; see its full sense range. See the sense tree, 6-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4093 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 3 verses 50%
- Daniel 2 verses 33%
- Ecclesiastes 1 verse 17%
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 6 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 6 verses · 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: Knowledge 4×
- American Standard Version: Knowledge 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Knowledge 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Knowledge 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4093 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 H4093 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4093 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4093 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.
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. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
- 1. knowledge (‖ חָכְמָה) of Solomon, 2 Ch 1:10, 11, 12 Dn 1:4 (‖ חָכְמָה and דַּעַת), v 7 (‖ הַשְׂכֵּל). e.g. 2 Chronicles 1:10
- 2. place of knowledge, mind, (in our idiom also) thought Ec 10:20. e.g. Ecclesiastes 10:20
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.m. 2 Ch 1:12 knowledge, thought (late); מַדָּע 2 Ch 1:10 + 4 times; מַדָּֽעֲךָ Ec 10:20;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from ידע (yâdaʻ) (H3045) — to know.
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.
מַדָּע
- intelligence. Macc. 23ᵃ, v. יָתֵר.
מַדַּע
- , knowledge, teaching; reason. Targ. Jer. III, 15. Targ. Prov. I, 5. Targ. Ps. XXXIV, 1 (Ms. דעת׳).—ידע מ׳ (euphem. for משתין בקיר) male adult. Targ. I Sam. XXV, 22; a. fr.—Pl. (fem. form) מַדְּעָן, מִדְּ׳ objects worth knowing or well-known, (used of persons) notables. Targ. O. Deut. I, 13; 15 (v. Berl. Massorah, p. 120; h. text ידעים).—V. מַנְדָּע.
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 6 distinct written forms H4093 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ/מַדָּֽעֲ/ךָ֗ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Ecclesiastes 10:20 | 1 |
| וְ/הַ/מַּדָּ֖ע | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 1:12 | 1 |
| וּ/מַדָּ֔ע | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 1:11 | 1 |
| וּ/מַדָּע֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 1:10 | 1 |
| מַדָּ֔ע | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 1:4 | 1 |
| מַדָּ֥ע | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 1:17 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4093, 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
- דע dêaʻ H1843 knowledge
- דעת daʻath H1847 knowledge
- ידע yᵉdaʻ H3046 to know
- ידעני yiddᵉʻônîy H3049 soothsayer
- מודע môwdaʻ H4129 kinsman
- מודעת môwdaʻath H4130 kindred
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.
- דעואל Dᵉʻûwʼêl H1845 Deuel
- ידוע Yaddûwaʻ H3037 Jaddua
- ידיעאל Yᵉdîyʻăʼêl H3043 Jediael
- ידע Yâdâʻ H3047 Jada
- ידעיה Yᵉdaʻyâh H3048 Jedaiah
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 14 — not the complete family. 5 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 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.