Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

מְזָרֶה

scatterer

H4215 Strong's Hebrew
mᵉzâreh Transliteration
/mez-aw-reh'/ 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 word מזרה centers on the idea of “scatterer.” With only 1 verse it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. Job dominates its distribution — 1 of 1 verses. It occurs only once, in Job 37:9. Related forms include זרה, זרת and מזרה. Dig into 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
north
Modern gloss
scatterer
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 H4215 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.
Job 37:9
only appearance
This word occurs only once, in Job 37:9.
#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

  • Job 1 verse 100%

By section of the Old Testament

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

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: North 1×
  • American Standard Version: North 1×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Driving north winds 1×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 1×, North winds 1×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H4215 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “North” 1×

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H4215 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “North” 1×

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H4215 across 1 tagged occurrence — most commonly:

  • “Driving north winds” 1×

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H4215 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “And” 1×
  • “North winds” 1×

8 senses and sub-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. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).

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 8 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.

Qal

  • Impf. וַיִּ֫זֶר Ex 32:20; 2 ms. תִּזְרֶה Ez 5:2; sf. תִּזְרֵם Is 30:22; 41:16; וָאֶזְרֵם Je 15:7; Imv. זְרֵה Nu 17:2; Inf. לִזְרוֹת Je 4:11; Pt. זֹרֶה Ru 3:2 Is 30:24;— e.g. Exodus 32:20
  • 1. scatter, the powder into which golden calf was ground Ex 32:20 (E, obj. not expr.); c. acc. (strange) fire from censers Nu 17:2 (P); hair (symbol. act) Ez 5:2; Is 30:22. e.g. Exodus 32:20
  • 2. fan, winnow, obj. גֹּרֶן הַשְּׂעוֹרִים Ru 3:2 Is 30:24 (where pt. has indef. subj.), 41:16 metaph., obj. mountains and hills, fig. of winnowing; fig. fan, winnow, in purification Je 4:11 (‖ לְהָכַ֑ר); in chastisement Je 15:7 (ז׳ בְּמִזְרֶה). e.g. Ruth 3:2

Niphal

  • Impf. וַיִּזָּרוּ Ez 36:19 be scattered, dispersed, of Israel; Inf. בְּהִזָּרוֹתֵיכֶם Ez 6:8 when ye shall be dispersed (on pl. sf. Ew§ 259 b, but Co del. י). e.g. Ezekiel 36:19

Piel

  • Pf. sf. וְזֵרָם 1 K 14:15; זֵרִ֑יתָ ψ 139:3, sf. זֵרִיתָ֫נוּ ψ 44:12; וְזֵרִיתִ֫י Ez 5:10 etc.; Inf. זָרוֹת Ez 20:23 etc.;— e.g. 1 Kings 14:15
  • 1. (intens. of Qal) scatter, disperse, especially of peoples, c. acc. (Israel and Judah) 1 K 14:15 Lv 26:33 (H), ψ 44:12 Je 31:10 Ez 5:10, 12; 12:14, 15; 20:23; 22:15 cf. Zc 2:2, 4(×2) ψ 106:27; bones of Israel Ez 6:5; people of Hazor Je 49:32; of Elam 49:36; of Babylon 51:2 (זָרִים = strangers?); Egyptians Ez 29:12; 30:26 + 30:23 (del. Co, intern. grounds); in general the wicked Pr 20:26; evil 20:8; pt. מְזָרִים = subst. scatterers, epith. of winds Jb 37:9 (cf. Qor 51:1); וְזֵרִיתִי פֶּרֶשׁ על־פניכם Mal 2:3 scatter dung on your faces (token of shame and curse); fig. disperse knowledge (of lips) Pr 15:7. e.g. 1 Kings 14:15
  • 2. winnow, sift (cf. Qal 2) only fig. אָרְחִי וְרִבְעִי זֵרִ֑יתָ ψ 139:3 my path and my couch thou siftest (Che; BaZMG 1887, 607 measurest, determinest, whence זֶרֶת, q.v.) e.g. Psalms 139:3

Pual

  • be scattered, Impf. יְזֹרֶה Jb 18:15, subj. גָּפְרִית, sq. עַל; Pt. f. מְזֹרָה (agreeing with רָ֑שֶׁת net) Pr 1:17. e.g. Job 18:15

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

vb. scatter, fan, winnow (Arabic ذَرَا cause to fly, scatter (of wind), winnow; Aramaic דְּרָא, ܕܪܳܐ; Ethiopic ዘረወ: )—

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

Derived from זרה (zârâh) (H2219) — to scatter.

TWOT: 579


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.

מִזְרֶה

  • winnowing fan. Kel. XIII, 7; T’bul Yom IV, 6. Tosef. Kel. B. Bath. VII, 3. Sifra B’ḥuck. Par. 2, ch. VI; 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.


Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4215, 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

Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.

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.