מִכְתָּב
writing
‘writing’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where H4385 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Exodus. 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.
Exodus
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.
“writing” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מכתב (miktâb). Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. With 8 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in 2 Chronicles, which alone accounts for 38% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Exodus 32:16. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4385 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 2 Chronicles 3 verses 38%
- Exodus 2 verses 25%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 13%
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 8 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 4 verses · 50%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 38%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 13%
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: Writing 5×, Put it also in writing 2×
- American Standard Version: Writing 5×, Put it also in writing 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Writing 3×, Put it in writing 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Writing 5×, Writing of 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4385 across 9 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4385 across 9 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4385 across 9 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4385 across 10 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.
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 3 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. = hand-writing וְהַמִּכְתָּב מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים הוּא Ex 32:16. e.g. Exodus 32:16
- 2. = thing written, Ex 39:30 (acc. cogn. c. כָּתַב), Dt 10:4; specif. a royal enactment or edict (= כְּתָב 4), 2 Ch 35:4 (‖ כְּתָב), 36:22 = Ezr 1:1; a prophetic writing 2 Ch 21:12. e.g. Exodus 39:30
- 3. in a title, מ׳ לְחִזְקִיָּהוּ Is 38:9 Writing of Hezekiah. e.g. Isaiah 38:9
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.m. 2 Ch 21:12 writing;—abs. מ׳ Dt 10:4 + 5 times; cstr. מִכְתַּב Ex 32:16 + 2 times;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from כתב (kâthab) (H3789) — to write.
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.
מִכְתָּב
- writ, letter. Ab. V, 6, a. e. הכתב והמ׳, v. כְּתָב.—Pl. מִכְתָּבִים, מִכְתָּבִין. Tosef. Sabb. XVII (XVIII), 8 המ׳ שבכרכים (ed. Zuck. המִכְתָּמִין) the public announcements in cities.
מִכְתָּב ²
- Targ. Esth. IX, 27.—Pl. מִכְתָּבִין. Targ. Y. I Deut. XXXII, 8.
מְכַתֵּב
- (preced. wds.) writing tool, pencil, stylus. Kel. XIII, 2; Tosef. Kel. B. Mets. III, 4 מ׳ שנטל הכותב וכ׳ the stylus of which the pointed end is broken off, v. כּוֹתֵב; Y. Sabb. VIII, 11ᵇ bot. Kidd. 21ᵇ; a. e.—Pl. מְכַתְּבִים, מְכַתְּבִין. Y. Taan. VI, 69ᵃ top במ׳ הללו אנו וכ׳ (not במכתובים) with these our pencils we shall march out and stab them; Lam. R. to II, 2; to III, 49.
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 H4385 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ/מִכְתָּ֖ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezra 1:1 | 2 |
| וְ/הַ/מִּכְתָּ֗ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 32:16 | 1 |
| וּ/בְ/מִכְתַּ֖ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | 2 Chronicles 35:4 | 1 |
| כַּ/מִּכְתָּ֣ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 10:4 | 1 |
| מִכְתַּ֤ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 32:16 | 1 |
| מִכְתַּב֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 39:30 | 1 |
| מִכְתָּ֔ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Chronicles 21:12 | 1 |
| מִכְתָּ֖ב | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 38:9 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4385, 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 → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
