מָטַר
to rain
‘to rain’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where H4305 appears in the Niphal stem in the Book of Amos. Filtered view — show all forms. 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.
Amos
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 verb מטר centers on the idea of “to rain.” First canonically at Genesis 2:5, it enters the text early. It turns up in 14 verses across 7 books, an uncommon footprint. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 2 stems (Niphal, Hiphil, and more). It clusters with מטר and מטרי under a shared root. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4305 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.
- #1,671
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 14 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 14 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 43%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 36%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 21%
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: I will cause it to rain 2×, Rained 2×
- American Standard Version: Him 2×, I will cause it to rain 2×, Rained 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: I will rain down 2×, Rained down 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Rain 4×, He rained down 2×, It 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4305 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H4305 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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 H4305 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 12 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 H4305 across 25 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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 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.
Niphal
- Impf. be rained upon חֶלְקָה אַחַת תִּמָּטֵר Am 4:7. e.g. Amos 4:7
Hiphil
- Pf. הִמְטִיר Gn 2:5; 19:24; וְהִמְטַרְתִּ֫י Am 4:7; Impf. יַמְטֵר ψ 11:6 Jb 20:23; וַיַּמְטֵר Ex 9:3 + 2 times; 3 fs. תַּמְטִיר Am 4:7 (but read אַמְטִיר 𝔊 𝔙); 1 s. אַמְטִיר Am 4:7 + v 7 (for תַּמְטִיר), Ez 38:22; Inf. cstr. הַמְטִיר Is 5:6 Jb 38:26; Pt. מַמְטִיר Gn 7:4 + 2 times;—send rain, rain (sq. עַל except Ex 9:18; 16:4); subj. י׳ (no dir. obj.) Gn 2:5; 7:4 (both J), Am 4:7(×3), cf. Jb 38:26; subj. clouds עָבִים by divine command Is 5:6 (acc. cogn. מָטָר); הִמְ׳ מָן ψ 78:24; שְׁאֵר v 27; לֶחֶם Ex 16:4 (J מִן־הַשָּׁמַים; no עַל); as act of judgment הִמ׳ בָּרָד rain hail, send hail, subj. י׳ Ex 9:23 (J); cf. v 18 (J; no עַל); obj. גָּפְרִית וָאֵשׁ Gn 19:24 (J), cf. Ez 38:22 וְגֶשֶׁם שׁוֹטֵף וְאַבְנֵי אֶלְגָּבִישׁ אֵשׁ וְגָפְרִית אַמ׳; fig. ψ 11:6 (obj. פַּחִים; but read פַּחֲמֵי אֵשׁ v. Ew Che Bae al.); Jb 20:23 (‖ cl. יְשַׁלַּח בּוֹ חֲרוֹן אַפּוֹ). e.g. Genesis 2:5
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. denom. (cf. GerberVerb. denom. 106) [rain] (Arabic مَطَرَ; Syriac ܡܛܰܪ; 𝔗 Aph. אַמְטַר);—
— 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.
מָטָר
- טרר to drip; cmp. טָרַד) rain. Taan. 6ᵇ (ref. to תִּמָּטֵר, Am. IV, 7) תהא מקום מ׳ it will be a place where the rain will stand (in pools). Ib. 9ᵃ מ׳ בשביל יחיד rain is sent for the sake of an individual; a. fr. e.g. Amos 4:7
מָטַר
- , Hif. הִמְטִיר (b. h.; denom. of preced.) to let rain. Tanḥ. ed. Bub., B’shall. 20 הייתי מַמְטִיר וכ׳ I let rain bread &c.
מְטַר
- Af. אַמְטַר same. Targ. Y. Gen. II, 5. Targ. O. ib. XIX, 24.
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 H4305 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 H4305, 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 → 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 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.
