מַחֲצִית
middle
‘middle’ 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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4276 appears — 14 distinct verses across 7 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 30:13 מַחֲצִ֥ית מַחֲצִ֣ית n c fs cs n c fs cs They shall give this, everyone who passes over to those who are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary; (the shekel is twenty gerahs;) half a shekel for an offering to Yahweh.
- Exodus 30:15 מִֽ/מַּחֲצִ֖ית prep + n c fs cs The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when they give the offering of Yahweh, to make atonement for your souls.
- Exodus 30:23 מַחֲצִית֖/וֹ n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms "Also take fine spices: of liquid myrrh, five hundred shekels; and of fragrant cinnamon half as much, even two hundred and fifty; and of fragrant cane, two hundred and fifty;
- Exodus 38:26 מַחֲצִ֥ית n c fs cs a beka a head, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for everyone who passed over to those who were numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty men.
Leviticus 1 verse
Numbers 4 verses
- Numbers 31:29 מִ/מַּֽחֲצִיתָ֖/ם prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3mp take it of their half, and give it to Eleazar the priest, for Yahweh's heave-offering.
- Numbers 31:30 וּ/מִ/מַּחֲצִ֨ת conj + prep + n c fs cs Of the children of Israel's half, you shall take one drawn out of every fifty, of the persons, of the oxen, of the donkeys, and of the flocks, [even] of all the cattle, and give them to the Levites, who keep the charge of the tent of Yahweh.
- Numbers 31:42 וּ/מִֽ/מַּחֲצִ֖ית conj + prep + n c fs cs Of the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided off from the men who warred
- Numbers 31:47 מִ/מַּחֲצִ֣ת prep + n c fs cs even of the children of Israel's half, Moses took one drawn out of every fifty, both of man and of animal, and gave them to the Levites, who kept the charge of the tent of Yahweh; as Yahweh commanded Moses.
Joshua 1 verse
1 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 2 verses
- 1 Chronicles 6:61 מִֽ֠/מַּחֲצִית prep + n c fs cs To the rest of the sons of Kohath [were given] by lot, out of the family of the tribe, out of the half-tribe, the half of Manasseh, ten cities.
- 1 Chronicles 6:70 וּ/מִֽ/מַּחֲצִית֙ conj + prep + n c fs cs and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Aner with its suburbs, and Bileam with its suburbs, for the rest of the family of the sons of Kohath.
Nehemiah 1 verse
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.
מחצית (machătsîyth) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “middle.” Scripture first uses it in Exodus 30:13. It turns up in 14 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. It concentrates in Exodus, which alone accounts for 29% of its uses. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4276 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 →
- 14
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 14 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,752
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,752 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 4 verses 29%
- Numbers 4 verses 29%
- 1 Chronicles 2 verses 14%
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 14 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 9 verses · 64%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 21%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 14%
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: Half 12×
- American Standard Version: Half 8×, 's half 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Half 11×, Half-tribe 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Half 6×, Half of 6×, Half of it 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4276 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4276 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4276 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H4276 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.
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. half of a shekel Ex 30:13(×2), 15 cf. v 23; 38:26; the flour for offering Lv 6:13(×2), of spoils Nu 31:29, 30, 42, 47; of tribe Jos 21:25 (all P), 1 Ch 6:46, 55; of chariots 1 K 16:9. e.g. Exodus 30:13
- 2. middle מ׳ היּוֹם=midday, noon Ne 8:3 (cf. midnight, חָצוֹת, חֲצִי 2). e.g. Nehemiah 8:3
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.f. half, middle—cstr. מַחֲצִית Ex 30:13(×2) + 8 times; מַחֲצִת Nu 31:30, 47; sf. מַחֲצִיתוֹ Ex 30:23, מַחֲצִיתָהּ Lv 6:13(×2), מַחֲצִיתָם Nu 31:29—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from חצה (châtsâh) (H2673) — to divide.
Forms in the corpus
The 12 distinct written forms H4276 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מַחֲצִ֣ית | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 30:13 | 3 |
| וּ/מִֽ/מַּחֲצִית֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 1 Chronicles 6:70 | 2 |
| מַחֲצִ֥ית | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 30:13 | 2 |
| וּ/מִ/מַּחֲצִ֨ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Numbers 31:30 | 1 |
| וּ/מִֽ/מַּחֲצִ֖ית | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Numbers 31:42 | 1 |
| וּ/מַחֲצִיתָ֖/הּ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Leviticus 6:20 | 1 |
| מִ/מַּֽחֲצִיתָ֖/ם | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Numbers 31:29 | 1 |
| מִ/מַּחֲצִ֣ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Numbers 31:47 | 1 |
| מִֽ/מַּחֲצִ֖ית | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 30:15 | 1 |
| מִֽ֠/מַּחֲצִית | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | 1 Chronicles 6:61 | 1 |
| מַחֲצִית֖/וֹ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 30:23 | 1 |
| מַחֲצִיתָ֣/הּ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Leviticus 6:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4276, 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
- חצות châtsôwth H2676 half
- חצי chêtsîy H2677 half
- חצץ châtsats H2686 to divide
- מחצה mechĕtsâh H4275 half
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 8 — not the complete family. 2 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 12 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 14 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.
