מָהַר
to hasten
‘to hasten’ 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem. Here: ‘hasten’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
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).
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H4116 appears in the Book of Joshua — 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.
Joshua
- Joshua 4:10 וַ/יְמַהֲר֥וּ conj + Piel wimpf 3mp For the priests who bore the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan, until everything was finished that Yahweh commanded Joshua to speak to the people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua: and the people hurried and passed over.
- Joshua 8:14 וַֽ/יְמַהֲר֡וּ conj + Piel wimpf 3mp It happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hurried and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at the time appointed, before the Arabah; but he didn't know that there was an ambush against him behind the city.
- Joshua 8:19 וַֽ/יְמַהֲר֔וּ conj + Piel wimpf 3mp The ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand, and entered into the city, and took it; and they hurried and set the city on fire.
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.
“to hasten” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb מהר (mâhar). Older and newer Bibles part ways — “haste” in the King James Version, “quickly” (Berean Standard Bible) and “hurried” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It appears 60 verses across 20 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its moderately common vocabulary. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 18:6. Read the stem: it spans 3 stems, including Niphal and Piel. See the sense tree, 60-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4116 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.
- 20 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 20 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #607
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 607 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 60 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 60 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 32 verses · 53%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 16 verses · 27%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 20%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Haste 5×, Hasted 5×, Made haste 4×
- American Standard Version†: Haste 5×, Hasted 4×, Made haste 4×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Quickly 14×, Hurried 7×, Hurry 5×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Hurried 14×, Hurry 10×, And 8×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4116 across 64† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 32 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 H4116 across 64† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 26 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 H4116 across 65† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 27 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 H4116 across 84† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 28 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
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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 6 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.
מהר I hasten (NH Pi., and deriv.
Niphal
- Pf. 3 fs. נִמְהָ֑רָה Jb 5:13; Pt. נִמְהָר Hb 1:6; pl. נִמְהָרִים Is 32:4; cstr. נִמְהֲרֵי Is 35:4;—be hurried = anxious, disturbed נִמְהֲרֵי־לֵב Is 35:4; hasty, precipitate, subj. עֵצָה Jb 5:13; so pt. as subst. Is 32:4; impetuous, of Chaldeans, Hb 1:6 (‖ מַר). e.g. Job 5:13
Piel
- Pf. מִהַר 1 S 4:14; Is 51:14; 3 fs. מִהֲרָה Je 48:16 etc.; Impf. יְמַהֵר Is 5:19 + 2 times; וַיְמַהֵר Gn 18:6 + 8 times (1 S 28:20 v. infr.); 3 fpl. תְּמַהֵרְנָה Je 9:17 etc.; Imv. ms. מַהֵר Gn 19:22 +; מַהֲרָה 1 S 23:27; 1 K 22:9, etc.; Inf. cstr. מַהֵר Pr 7:23 +; Pt. מְמַהֵר Gn 41:32; Mal 3:5 (on מַהֵר Zp 1:14 [1 S 23:22] cf. Kö i. 268, Schwally ZAW x. 1890, 176 vid. i. מַהֵר infra), fpl. מְמַהֲרוֹת Pr 6:18;— e.g. 1 Samuel 4:14
- 1. hasten, make haste, = go or come quickly Gn 18:6 1 S 9:12 (but del. 𝔊 We Dr Kit Bu HPS), Na 2:6; Is 49:17; 1 Ch 12:9; = go eagerly, (sq. Inf. of purpose) Pr 1:16; Is 59:7; Pt. = swift, prompt Mal 3:5; of bird Pr 7:23; fig. of calamity Is 5:19 (‖ חוּשׁ), Je 48:16, cf. מַהֵר שָׁלָל חָשׁ בַּז Is 8:1, 3, infr. e.g. Genesis 18:6
- 2. hasten + vb., (מ׳ having really adverbial force): sq. Inf. Gn 18:7 (מִהַר לַעֲשׂת); cf. 27:20; 41:32 (subj. God), Ex 2:18; 10:16; 12:33; 2 S 15:14; Is 32:4; 51:14; Pr 6:18; Ec 5:1; more often sq. vb. c. ו Gn 24:18, 20, 46; 44:11 (all J), 45:9, 13 (E), prob. 43:30 (J), also Ex 34:8 (J), Jos 4:10; 8:14, 19 (all JE), Ju 13:10; 1 S 4:14; 17:48; 23:27; 25:18, 23, 34(×2); 28:24; 2 S 15:14; 19:17; 1 K 20:33, 41; 2 K 9:13; Je 9:17; so even when act. is not wholly voluntary 1 S 28:20 (but read prob. וַיִּבָּהֵל 𝔊 We Dr Kit Bu); also, ו om., ψ 106:13; especially c. Imv. Gn 19:22 (J), Ju 9:48; Est 6:10; so also מַהֵר עֲנֵנִי ψ 69:18; 102:3; 143:7; cf. 79:8 (v. Olad loc.). e.g. Genesis 18:7
- 3. trans. hasten, = prepare quickly Gn 18:6; = bring quickly 1 K 22:9 = 2 Ch 18:8, Est 5:5; = do quickly 2 Ch 24:5(×2). e.g. Genesis 18:6
מהר II denom. acquire by paying purchase-price (Arabic مَهَرَ give a dowry, marry for a مَهْرٌ
Qal
- Pf. 3 pl. מָהָ֑רוּ ψ 16:4 usually obtain another in exchange (or, by paying a price, cf. Che), but text dub.; Impf. 3 ms. sf. + Inf. abs. מָהֹר יִמְהָרֶנָּה לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה Ex 22:15 (E). e.g. Psalms 16:4
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
I. vb. hasten (NH Pi., and deriv.; Arabic مَهَرَ be practised, skilled (with Assyrian mâru, send, order, govern, cf. ii. מהר); Ethiopic መሀረ train, teach; Syriac ܡܗܪ Pa. id.; cf. also Egypt. māhar, trained warrior Bondi 57);—
II. vb. denom. acquire by paying purchase-price (Arabic مَهَرَ give a dowry, marry for a مَهْرٌ; cf. GerberVerb. denom. 12 Buhl SS);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
הַר
- mound, mountain; trnsf. eminent person. Midd. II, 1, a. fr. הַר הבית the Temple mount. Yeb. 17ᵃ (play on ה̇ר̇פ̇נ̇יא) ה̇ר̇ שהכל פ̇ונ̇ין בו a hill to which all turn (whose spurious descent prevents them from getting wives elsewhere); a. v. fr.—Ḥull. 39ᵇ (in Chald. diction) רישיך והר here is thy head and here the mountain (a colloquial phrase for compelling one to give up a bargain).—Ex. R. s. 28 (ref. to Ex. XIX, 3) בזכות הה׳ for the merit of the distinguished one (Abraham), ואין הה׳ אלא אבות har means the patriarchs (ref. to Mic. VI, 2). Snh. 107ᵃ ה׳ שבכם the most prominent of you; a. fr.—[For proper nouns composed with הר, v. respective determinants.]—Pl. הָרִים, הֲרָרִים. Tam. 32ᵃ, a. e. הָרֵי חושך, v. חו̇שֶׁךְ.—Snh. 24ᵃ עוקר הרי הרים uprooting the highest mountains (a figure for dialectical ingenuity). Y. Yeb. I, 3ᵃ bot. בין שני הֶהָ׳ וכ׳ between the two high mountains (great scholars). Ex. R. s. 15 ואין ה׳ אלא אבות, v. supra.—Ḥag. I, 8 כה׳ תלויין בשערה like mountains suspended on a hair (a slender Bible text for numerous Talmudic laws); a. v. fr. e.g. Exodus 19:3
מָהַר
- to exchange, buy. Denom. מוֹהַר.
- (cmp. חָלַף)
- 1. to hurry, be speedy. Sabb. 97ᵃ מְמַהֶרֶת לבוא וכ׳ comes quicker than &c. B. Kam. 93ᵃ מְמַהֲרִין לצועק וכ׳ he who cries for revenge will sooner be punished than he who is cried against. Sifré Deut. 277 מְמַהֵר אני ליפרע ע"י עני I (the Lord) will sooner take revenge when a poor man is wronged than when a rich man is; a. fr.
- 2. to expedite. Kidd. 31ᵇ מַהֲרוּנִי expedite me (on my journey).
מֹהַר
- , v. מוֹהַר
מָהִר
- preced. art.) quick, ready. Ab. V, 12 מ׳ לשמוע ומ׳ לאבד quick of perception and quick to forget. Ex. R. s. 11, beg.; 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.
Forms in the corpus
The 57 distinct written forms H4116 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 H4116, 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.
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 5 — 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 57 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 18:6
- Exodus 2:18
- Joshua 4:10
- Judges 9:48
- 1 Samuel 4:14
- 2 Samuel 15:14
- 1 Kings 22:9
- 2 Kings 9:13
- 1 Chronicles 12:8
- 2 Chronicles 18:8
- Esther 5:5
- Job 5:13
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.
