מְלוּכָה
kingship
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
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4410 appears in the Book of 1 Kings — 6 distinct verses. 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 Kings
- 1 Kings 1:46 הַ/מְּלוּכָֽה ptcl def.art + n c fs Also Solomon sits on the throne of the kingdom.
- 1 Kings 2:15 הַ/מְּלוּכָ֔ה הַ/מְּלוּכָה֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs He said, You know that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign: however the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother's; for it was his from Yahweh.
- 1 Kings 2:22 הַ/מְּלוּכָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c fs King Solomon answered his mother, Why do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah.
- 1 Kings 11:35 הַ/מְּלוּכָ֖ה ptcl def.art + n c fs but I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and will give it to you, even ten tribes.
- 1 Kings 12:21 הַ/מְּלוּכָ֔ה ptcl def.art + n c fs When Rehoboam was come to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah, and the tribe of Benjamin, a hundred and eighty thousand chosen men, who were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel, to bring the kingdom again to Rehoboam the son of Solomon.
- 1 Kings 21:7 מְלוּכָ֖ה n c fs Jezebel his wife said to him, Do you now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let your heart be merry: I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.
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.
מלוכה (mᵉlûwkâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “kingship.” It first appears in 1 Samuel 10:16. Spanning 23 verses in 11 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. 1 Kings dominates its distribution — 6 of 23 verses. Related forms include מלך, מלך and מלך. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4410 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 →
- 23
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 23 distinct verses.
- 11 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 11 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 23 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 23 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 20 verses · 87%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 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: Kingdom 15×, Royal 4×, King's 2×
- American Standard Version: Kingdom 11×, Royal 6×
- Berean Standard Bible: Kingdom 6×, Kingship 6×, Royal 6×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Kingdom 13×, Kingship 7×, Royal 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4410 across 24 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4410 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 H4410 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4410 across 23 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 BDB
The 1 sense 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.
- kingship, royalty, kingly office
Word origin
n.f. kingship, royalty;—מ׳ abs. 1 S 10:16 + 23 times;—kingship, kingly office, royalty: 1 S 10:16, 25; 11:14; 18:8 1 K 2:15(×2) 22; 11:35 1 Ch 10:14 Is 34:12; belonging to י׳ Ob 21 ψ 22:29 (‖ וּמשֵׁל בַּגּוֹיִם); לָכַד מ׳ עַל 1 S 14:47 assume sovereignty over; נָתַן מ׳ בְּיַד 2 S 16:8 give kingship to (subj. י׳); הֵשִׁיב מ׳ ל׳ 1 K 12:21 restore kingship to; עָשָׂה מ׳ על 1 K 21:7 exercise kingship over; metaph. of Jerus. וַתִּצְלְחִי לִמְלוּכָה Ez 16:13 (del. 𝔊 Co); עִיר הַמ׳ 2 S 12:26 = royal city; cf. כִּסֵּא הַמ׳ 1 K 1:46; זֶרַע הַמ׳ 2 K 25:25 so Je 41:1 Ez 17:13 Dn 1:3; צְנִו֯ף מ׳ Is 62:3 (‖ עֲטֶרֶת תִּפְאֶרֶת).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מלך (mâlak) (H4427) — to reign.
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.
מְלוּכָה
- rulership, office. Midr. Prov. ch. XXI בו"ד עולה למ׳ וכ׳ when a human being rises to rulership, he is in the hands of the Lord; Yalk. ib. 959. Sabb. 56ᵇ יחלקו את המ׳ shall divide the rulership between themselves. Num. R. s. 3 בעלי מ׳ rulers; a. e.
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 11 distinct written forms H4410 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/מְּלוּכָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 17:13 | 6 |
| הַ/מְּלוּכָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 1:46 | 5 |
| הַ/מְּלוּכָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Daniel 1:3 | 3 |
| הַ/מְּלוּכָה֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 2:15 | 2 |
| מְלוּכָ֖ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 21:7 | 2 |
| הַ/מְּלֻכָ֔ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 10:25 | 1 |
| הַ/מְּלוּכָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 22:28 | 1 |
| הַ/מְּלוּכָ֗ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 2 Kings 25:25 | 1 |
| הַ֠/מְּלוּכָה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jeremiah 41:1 | 1 |
| לִ/מְלוּכָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:13 | 1 |
| מְלוּכָ֣ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Isaiah 34:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4410, 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
- מלך melek H4428 king
- מלך mᵉlak H4431 counsel
- מלכות malkûwth H4438 kingdom
- מלכת mᵉleketh H4446 queen
- ממלכה mamlâkâh H4467 kingdom
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
- ימלך Yamlêk H3230 Jamlech
- מלוך Mallûwk H4409 Malluch
- מלך Môlek H4432 Molech
- מלכת Môleketh H4447 Hammoleketh
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. 4 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 22 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 23 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
- 1 Samuel 10:16
- 2 Samuel 12:26
- 1 Kings 1:46
- 2 Kings 25:25
- 1 Chronicles 10:14
- Isaiah 34:12
- Jeremiah 41:1
- Ezekiel 16:13
- Daniel 1:3
- Obadiah 1:21
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.
