מַחְלוֹן
Mahlon
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Mahlon’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H4248 appears — 4 distinct verses across 1 book. 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.
Ruth 4 verses
- Ruth 1:2 מַחְל֤וֹן n Proper The name of the man was Elimelech, and the name of his wife Naomi, and the name of his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, Ephrathites of Bethlehem Judah. They came into the country of Moab, and continued there.
- Ruth 1:5 מַחְל֣וֹן n Proper Mahlon and Chilion died both of them; and the woman was left of her two children and of her husband.
- Ruth 4:9 וּ/מַחְל֑וֹן conj + n Proper Boaz said to the elders, and to all the people, You are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi.
- Ruth 4:10 מַחְל֜וֹן n Proper Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance, that the name of the dead not be cut off from among his brothers, and from the gate of his place: you are witnesses this day.
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.
At its core, מחלון (Machlôwn) means “Mahlon.” It is rare — just 4 verses in the entire Hebrew Bible. Its uses cluster heavily in Ruth (100% of all occurrences). It first appears in Ruth 1:2. 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 H4248 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 →
- 4
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 4 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,696
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,696 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 4 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ruth 4 verses 100%
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 4 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 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: Mahlon 3×
- American Standard Version: Mahlon 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Mahlon 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Mahlon 4×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4248 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4248 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4248 across 4 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 H4248 across 4 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses 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.
- Mahlon = "sick"
- son of Elimelech by Naomi and first husband of Ruth
Word origin
n.pr.m. son of Elimelech and Naomi, first husband of Ruth, Ru 1:2, 5; 4:9, 10, 𝔊 Μααλων.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חלה (châlâh) (H2470) — to be sick.
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.
חַלּוֹן
- c. (b. h.; perforation, aperture, window. B. Bath. III, 6 ח׳ המצרית וכ׳ the Egyptian window (a very small aperture in the wall) gives no privilege (v. חֲזָקָה), i.e. the neighbor may build against it, contrad. to הצורית a Tyrian window. Gen. R. s. 31, expl. צהר (Gen. VI, 16); a. v. fr.—Pl. חַלּוֹנוֹת. Y. R. Hash. II, 58ᵃ; Ex. R. s. 15 שס"ה ח׳ וכ׳ 365 apertures did the Lord create in the sky; a. fr. e.g. Genesis 6:16
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 4 distinct written forms H4248 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/מַחְל֑וֹן | Noun, Proper | Ruth 4:9 | 1 |
| מַחְל֜וֹן | Noun, Proper | Ruth 4:10 | 1 |
| מַחְל֣וֹן | Noun, Proper | Ruth 1:5 | 1 |
| מַחְל֤וֹן | Noun, Proper | Ruth 1:2 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4248, 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
- חלא châlâʼ H2456 to be sick
- חלי chălîy H2481 ornament
- חלי chŏlîy H2483 sickness
- חלל châlal H2490 to profane
- מחלה machăleh H4245 disease
- מחלי machluy H4251 sickness
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 11 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Mahlon). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Sickly, the elder of Elimelech the Bethlehemite's two sons by Naomi. He married Ruth and died childless (Ruth 1:2, 5; 4:9, 10), in the land of Moab.
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(sick) the first husband of Ruth; son of Eiimelech and Naomi. (Ruth 1:2,5; 4:9,10) comp. 1Sam 17:12
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 4 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 4 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.
