מַטָּרָה
guard
also: ward, prison, mark, target fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4307 appears — 15 distinct verses across 5 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.
1 Samuel 1 verse
Nehemiah 2 verses
- Nehemiah 3:25 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֑ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Palal the son of Uzai [repaired] over against the turning [of the wall], and the tower that stands out from the upper house of the king, which is by the court of the guard. After him Pedaiah the son of Parosh [repaired].
- Nehemiah 12:39 הַ/מַּטָּרָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs and above the gate of Ephraim, and by the old gate, and by the fish gate, and the tower of Hananel, and the tower of Hammeah, even to the sheep gate: and they stood still in the gate of the guard.
Job 1 verse
Jeremiah 10 verses
- Jeremiah 32:2 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Now at that time the king of Babylon's army was besieging Jerusalem; and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the guard, which was in the king of Judah's house.
- Jeremiah 32:8 הַ/מַּטָּרָה֒ ptcl def.art + n c fs So Hanamel my uncle's son came to me in the court of the guard according to the word of Yahweh, and said to me, Please buy my field that is in Anathoth, which is in the land of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the redemption is yours; buy it for yourself. Then I knew that this was the word of Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 32:12 הַ/מַּטָּרָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs and I delivered the deed of the purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanamel my uncle's son, and in the presence of the witnesses who subscribed the deed of the purchase, before all the Jews who sat in the court of the guard.
- Jeremiah 33:1 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Moreover the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah the second time, while he was yet shut up in the court of the guard, saying,
- Jeremiah 37:21 הַ/מַּטָּרָה֒ הַ/מַּטָּרָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs Then Zedekiah the king commanded, and they committed Jeremiah into the court of the guard; and they gave him daily a loaf of bread out of the bakers' street, until all the bread in the city was spent. Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
- Jeremiah 38:6 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Then took they Jeremiah, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchijah the king's son, that was in the court of the guard: and they let down Jeremiah with cords. In the dungeon there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah sank in the mire.
- Jeremiah 38:13 הַ/מַּטָּרָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords, and took him up out of the dungeon: and Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.
- Jeremiah 38:28 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c fs So Jeremiah abode in the court of the guard until the day that Jerusalem was taken.
- Jeremiah 39:14 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֗ה ptcl def.art + n c fs they sent, and took Jeremiah out of the court of the guard, and committed him to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, that he should carry him home: so he lived among the people.
- Jeremiah 39:15 הַ/מַּטָּרָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs Now the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah, while he was shut up in the court of the guard, saying,
Lamentations 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.
The Hebrew noun מטרא centers on the idea of “guard.” Jeremiah dominates its distribution — 10 of 15 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 15 verses — uncommon. Beyond “guard” it also covers “ward”, “prison”, and “mark” — see its full sense range. Where the King James Version says “prison,” newer translations reach for “guard” (Berean Standard Bible); the renderings breakdown has the detail. 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 H4307 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 →
- 15
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 15 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 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 15 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 15 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 73%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 27%
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: Prison 13×, Mark 3×
- American Standard Version: Guard 13×, Mark 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Guard 13×, Target 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Guard 2×, Target 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4307 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4307 across 16 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 H4307 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4307 across 5 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.
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. guard, ward, prison, usually חֲצַר הַמּ׳ court of guard (v. i. חָצֵר) Je 32:2, 8, 12; 33:1; 37:21(×2); 38:6, 13, 28; 39:14, 15; Ne 3:25; שַׁעַר הַמּ׳ 12:39. e.g. Jeremiah 32:2
- 2. target, mark Jb 16:12 (fig. of י׳’s chastisement), כַּמַּטָּרָא לַחֵץ La 3:12 (sim. id.); lit. only 1 S 20:20. e.g. Job 16:12
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
and (La 3:12) מַטָּרָא n.f. 1. guard, ward, prison. 2. target, mark (as kept in the eye, watched, cf. נָצַר Pr 23:26, and σκόπος (watcher, mark) from σκέπτομαι; perhaps Nab. מט[רתא] Lzb323);—always abs.:—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נטר (nâṭar) (H5201) — to keep.
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.
מִטְרָא
- Targ. O. Gen. II, 5. Targ. Job XXXVII, 11 (h. text אוֹרוֹ!); a. v. fr.—Sabb. 65ᵇ; Bekh. 55 מ׳ במערבא … פרת that rain fell in the West (Palestine), the Euphrates is the great witness (when the Euphrates rises, it indicates that Palestine has had rain). Taan. 6ᵃ מ׳ בעלה וכ׳, v. בַּעֲלָא; a. fr.—Pl. מִטְרִין, מִי׳. Targ. Y. Gen. XIX, 24. Targ. Ps. LXV, 10 Ms. (ed. sing.).—Taan. 9ᵇ משקרי מִיטְרַיְּיהוּ their rains are faithless (the signs of rain are deceptive). [מִטְרִין, מִיטְרִין womb, v. מִיטְרִין.]
מַטָּרָא
- , v. מטַּרְתָּא
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 8 distinct written forms H4307 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הַ/מַּטָּרָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 32:12 | 4 |
| הַ/מַּטָּרָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 32:2 | 3 |
| הַ/מַּטָּרָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 33:1 | 2 |
| הַ/מַּטָּרָה֒ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 32:8 | 2 |
| לְ/מַטָּרָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 20:20 | 2 |
| הַ/מַּטָּרָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Nehemiah 3:25 | 1 |
| הַ/מַּטָּרָ֗ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 39:14 | 1 |
| כַּ/מַּטָּרָ֖א | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Lamentations 3:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4307, 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 13 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 15 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.
