מִלָּה
word
‘word’ is one of 3 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
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
5 distinct verses where H4406 appears in the Construct state, across 1 book. 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.
Daniel 5 verses
- Daniel 2:10 מִלַּ֣ת מִלָּ֤ה n c fs cs n c fs The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man on the earth who can show the king's matter, because no king, lord, or ruler, has asked such a thing of any magician, or enchanter, or Chaldean.
- Daniel 2:23 מִלַּ֥ת n c fs cs I thank you, and praise you, you God of my fathers, who have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we desired of you; for you have made known to us the king's matter.
- Daniel 3:22 מִלַּ֤ת n c fs cs Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
- Daniel 3:28 וּ/מִלַּ֤ת conj + n c fs cs Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel, and delivered his servants who trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and have yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.
- Daniel 5:10 מִלֵּ֤י n c fp cs [Now] the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords came into the banquet house: the queen spoke and said, O king, live forever; don't let your thoughts trouble you, nor let your face be changed.
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.
“word” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מלה (millâh). It clusters heavily in Daniel, which alone accounts for 100% of its uses. With 22 verses in 1 book, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. First canonically at Daniel 2:5, it enters the text early. Lexicons map it across 3 senses. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4406 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 →
- 22
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 22 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,327
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,327 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 22 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Daniel 22 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 22 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 22 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: Thing 6×, Matter 4×, Words 4×
- American Standard Version: Thing 7×, Words 5×, 's matter 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Matter 3×, Words 3×, Command 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Matter 9×, Words 4×, Word 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4406 across 24 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4406 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H4406 across 22 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 2 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4406 across 28 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 3 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.
- word, thing
- word, utterance, command
- thing, affair, matter
Word origin
n.f. word, speech, utterance (poet., especially Jb; common in Aramaic);—מ׳ ψ 139:4 Jb 30:9; sf. מִלָּתִי Jb 13:17 + 3 times; מִלָּתוֹ 2 S 23:2; pl. מִלִּים Jb 6:26 + 9 times (all Jb); מִלִּין Jb 4:2 + 12 times (all Jb); pl. sf. מִלָּ֑י Jb 19:23 + 4 times; מִלֶּיךָ Jb 4:4 Pr 23:9; מִלֵּיהֶם ψ 19:5;—word בִּלְשׁוֹנִי in (on) my tongue ψ 139:4; word (of י׳), עַל־לְשׁוֹנִי on my tongue 2 S 23:2; שֵׂכֶל מ׳ Pr 23:9; fig. ψ 19:5 (‖ קַוָּם; but read קוֹלָם v. Che crit. n.); elsewhere only Jb (34 times); sg. speech, utterance Jb 13:17; 21:2; 24:25; 29:22; also word = by-word, וָאֱהִי לָהֶם לְמִלָּה Jb 30:9; pl. words, Jb 4:4; 6:26; 8:10: 12:11; 15:3 (‖ דָּבָר), 16:4; 19:2, 23; 32:11, 14; 33:1, 8 (קוֹל מ׳), 34:2, 3, 16 (קוֹל מ׳), 36:2, 4; words of God Jb 23:5; words = speech, speaking, וַעְצֹר בְּמִלִּין מִי יוּכָ֑ל Jb 4:2, cf. 29:9; utter words, וְהֹצֵאתָ מִפִּיךָ מִלִּין 15:13; הִגַּדְתָּ מ׳ 26:4; lay snares for words תְּשִׂימוּן קִנְצֵי לְמִלִּין Jb 18:2, cf. Jb 32:15 הֶעְתִּיקוּ מֵהֶם מִלִּים; מָלֵתִי מִלִּים Jb 32:18 I am full of words, cf. אִם־יֵשׁ־מִלִּין הֲשִׁיבֵנִי 33:32; אֲשִׁיבְךָ מִלִּין Jb 35:4; בִּבְלִי־דַ֫עַת מִלִּין יַכְבִּר 35:16, cf. 38:2.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מלה (millâh) (H4405) — word.
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.
מִלָּה
- word. Lev. R. s. 16 (prov.) מ׳ בסלע משתוקא בשנים where a word is worth a Sela, silence is worth two; Meg. 18ᵃ (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. note 1).—Pl. מִלִּין, מִי. Cant. R. to IV, 4, v. קָצַב; a. e.—Ch. מִלָּה, v. מִילָּא.]
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 22 distinct written forms H4406 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מִלְּתָ֑/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 5:26 | 2 |
| מִלְּתָ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:5 | 2 |
| וּ/מִלְּתָ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 7:28 | 1 |
| וּ/מִלְּתָ֨/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:11 | 1 |
| וּ/מִלִּ֗ין | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 7:25 | 1 |
| וּ/מִלַּ֤ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 3:28 | 1 |
| וּ/מִלָּ֨ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 2:9 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ/א֙ | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:31 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ/א֮ | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 4:33 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ֔/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:15 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ֛/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 6:12 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ֣/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 6:14 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָ֥/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:17 | 1 |
| מִלְּתָֽ/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 2:8 | 1 |
| מִלִּ֖ין | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Daniel 7:1 | 1 |
| מִלֵּ֤י | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Daniel 5:10 | 1 |
| מִלַּ֣ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 2:10 | 1 |
| מִלַּ֤ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 3:22 | 1 |
| מִלַּ֥ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct | Daniel 2:23 | 1 |
| מִלַּיָּ֖/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 7:16 | 1 |
| מִלַּיָּ֣/א | Particle, Definite Article | Daniel 7:11 | 1 |
| מִלָּ֤ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 2:10 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 19 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 22 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.
