מְזוּזָה
doorpost
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 7 times (37%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 5 times (26%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 5 times (26%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 19 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4201 appears — 17 distinct verses across 8 books. 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.
Exodus 4 verses
- Exodus 12:7 הַ/מְּזוּזֹ֖ת ptcl def.art + n c fp They shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two side-posts and on the lintel, on the houses in which they shall eat it.
- Exodus 12:22 הַ/מְּזוּזֹ֔ת ptcl def.art + n c fp You shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side-posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
- Exodus 12:23 הַ/מְּזוּזֹ֑ת ptcl def.art + n c fp For Yahweh will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Yahweh will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you.
- Exodus 21:6 הַ/מְּזוּזָ֑ה ptcl def.art + n c fs then his master shall bring him to God, and shall bring him to the door or to the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him for ever.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
Judges 1 verse
1 Samuel 1 verse
1 Kings 3 verses
- 1 Kings 6:31 מְזוּז֖וֹת n c fp cs For the entrance of the oracle he made doors of olive-wood: the lintel [and] door-posts were a fifth part [of the wall].
- 1 Kings 6:33 מְזוּז֣וֹת n c fp cs So also made he for the entrance of the temple door-posts of olive-wood, out of a fourth part [of the wall];
- 1 Kings 7:5 וְ/הַ/מְּזוּז֖וֹת conj + ptcl def.art + n c fp All the doors and posts were made square with beams: and window was over against window in three ranks.
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 4 verses
- Ezekiel 41:21 מְזוּזַ֣ת n c fs cs As for the temple, the door-posts were squared; and as for the face of the sanctuary, the appearance [of it] was as the appearance [of the temple].
- Ezekiel 43:8 וּ/מְזֽוּזָתָ/ם֙ מְזוּזָתִ֔/י conj + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3mp n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door-post beside my door-post, and there was [but] the wall between me and them; and they have defiled my holy name by their abominations which they have committed: therefore I have consumed them in my anger.
- Ezekiel 45:19 מְזוּזַ֣ת מְזוּזַ֔ת n c fs cs n c fs cs The priest shall take of the blood of the sin-offering, and put it on the door-posts of the house, and on the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and on the posts of the gate of the inner court.
- Ezekiel 46:2 מְזוּזַ֣ת n c fs cs The prince shall enter by the way of the porch of the gate outside, and shall stand by the post of the gate; and the priests shall prepare his burnt-offering and his peace-offerings, and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate: then he shall go forth; but the gate shall not be shut until the evening.
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.
מזוזה — transliterated mᵉzûwzâh — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “doorpost.” Where the King James Version says “posts,” newer translations reach for “doorposts” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 17 verses — uncommon. Debuting at Exodus 12:7, it then recurs through the corpus. It shares a root with זיז, זוזים and זזא. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4201 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,563
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,563 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 10 verses · 59%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 35%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 6%
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: Posts 10×, Side posts 4×, Post 3×
- American Standard Version: Door-posts 6×, Posts 5×, Door-post 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Doorposts 7×, Doorpost 3×, Gateposts 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Doorposts 6×, Doorposts of 5×, Doorpost 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4201 across 19 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 H4201 across 19 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 H4201 across 18 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4201 across 20 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.
- doorpost, gatepost
Word origin
מְזוּזָה n.f. door-post, gate-post
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from זיז (zîyz) (H2123) — moving creatures.
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.
מְזוּזָה
- [coupling, set,] door-frame, esp. door-post. Kidd. 22ᵇ (ref. to Ex. XXI, 6) דלת ומ׳ שהיו עידי וכ׳ door and post were my witnesses in Egypt (ib. XII, 23) when I passed … and said, my servants are the sons of Israel and not servants of servants &c. Ib. מה מ׳ מעומד וכ׳ as m’zuzah is used only of what is in a standing position, so is here deleth meant of the door in its position. Men. 34ᵃ למ׳ אחת where there is only one door-post; a. e.—Pl. מְזוּזוֹת. Mekh. Bo. s. 11; a. e.—Esp. m’zuzah (Deut. VI, 9; XI, 20) the inscription on the door-post (a slip of parchment containing Deut. VI, 4—9, a. XI, 13—21). Pes. 4ᵃ מ׳ חובת הדר וכ׳ to fasten the m. at the door is the tenant’s duty (not the owner’s). Men. 44ᵃ פטור מן המ׳ requires no m. Ib. כל שאין לו מ׳ בפתחו he who has no m. at his door. Ib. 34ᵃ חייב במ׳ אחת is bound to have one m. at the door; a. v. fr.—Y. Meg. IV, 75ᶜ bot. בית מְזוּזָתוֹ של ר׳ the case of the m. in the house of Rabbi.—Yoma 11ᵃ מְזוּזַת יחיד the m. in a private house.—Pl. as ab. Men. l. c. חייב בשתי מ׳ must have two door-post inscriptions; Yoma l. c.; a. fr. e.g. Exodus 21:6
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 16 distinct written forms H4201 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 H4201, 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
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 6 — not the complete family. 4 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 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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
- Exodus 12:7
- Deuteronomy 6:9
- Judges 16:3
- 1 Samuel 1:9
- 1 Kings 6:31
- Proverbs 8:34
- Isaiah 57:8
- Ezekiel 41:21
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.
