מַלְכוּ
kingdom
also: royalty, reign 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).
21 distinct verses where H4437 appears in the Construct state, across 2 books. 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.
Ezra 4 verses
- Ezra 4:24 לְ/מַלְכ֖וּת prep + n c fs cs Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem; and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.
- Ezra 6:15 לְ/מַלְכ֖וּת prep + n c fs cs This house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.
- Ezra 7:13 בְּ/מַלְכוּתִ/י֩ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs I make a decree, that all those of the people of Israel, and their priests and the Levites, in my realm, who are minded of their own free will to go to Jerusalem, go with you.
- Ezra 7:23 מַלְכ֥וּת n c fs cs Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be done exactly for the house of the God of heaven; for why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons?
Daniel 17 verses
- Daniel 4:3 מַלְכוּתֵ/הּ֙ מַלְכ֣וּת n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms n c fs cs How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders! his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation.
- Daniel 4:17 בְּ/מַלְכ֣וּת prep + n c fs cs The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones; to the intent that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whoever he will, and sets up over it the lowest of men.
- Daniel 4:18 מַלְכוּתִ֗/י n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs This dream I, king Nebuchadnezzar, have seen; and you, Belteshazzar, declare the interpretation, because all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation; but you are able; for the spirit of the holy gods is in you.
- Daniel 4:25 בְּ/מַלְכ֣וּת prep + n c fs cs that you shall be driven from men, and your dwelling shall be with the animals of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass as oxen, and shall be wet with the dew of the sky, and seven times shall pass over you; until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whoever he will.
- Daniel 4:26 מַלְכוּתָ֖/ךְ n c fs cs + sfx pers 2ms Whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree; your kingdom shall be sure to you, after that you shall have known that the heavens do rule.
- Daniel 4:32 בְּ/מַלְכ֣וּת prep + n c fs cs and you shall be driven from men; and they dwelling shall be with the animals of the field; you shall be made to eat grass as oxen; and seven times shall pass over you; until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whoever he will.
- Daniel 4:34 וּ/מַלְכוּתֵ֖/הּ conj + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him who lives forever; for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom from generation to generation.
- Daniel 4:36 מַלְכוּתִ֜/י מַלְכוּתִ֣/י n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs At the same time my understanding returned to me; and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and brightness returned to me; and my counselors and my lords sought to me; and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent greatness was added to me.
- Daniel 5:11 בְּ/מַלְכוּתָ֗/ךְ prep + n c fs cs + sfx pers 2ms There is a man in your kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of your father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, were found in him; and the king Nebuchadnezzar your father, the king, [I say], your father, made him master of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers;
- Daniel 5:20 מַלְכוּתֵ֔/הּ n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:
- Daniel 5:21 בְּ/מַלְכ֣וּת prep + n c fs cs and he was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the animals', and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys; he was fed with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the sky; until he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and that he sets up over it whoever he will.
- Daniel 5:26 מַלְכוּתָ֖/ךְ n c fs cs + sfx pers 2ms This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God has numbered your kingdom, and brought it to an end;
- Daniel 5:28 מַלְכוּתָ֔/ךְ n c fs cs + sfx pers 2ms PERES; your kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
- Daniel 6:26 מַלְכוּתִ֗/י וּ/מַלְכוּתֵ/הּ֙ n c fs cs + sfx pers 1cs conj + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms I make a decree, that in all the dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God, and steadfast forever, His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed; and his dominion shall be even to the end.
- Daniel 6:28 בְּ/מַלְכ֣וּת וּ/בְ/מַלְכ֖וּת prep + n c fs cs conj + prep + n c fs cs So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
- Daniel 7:14 וּ/מַלְכ֔וּ וּ/מַלְכוּתֵ֖/הּ conj + n c fs conj + n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
- Daniel 7:27 וּ/מַלְכוּתָ֨/ה מַלְכְוָת֙ מַלְכוּתֵ/הּ֙ מַלְכ֣וּת conj + n c fs det + ptcl def.art n c fp cs n c fs cs + sfx pers 3ms n c fs cs The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole the sky, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High: his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
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.
מלכו (malkûw) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “kingdom.” Daniel dominates its distribution — 39 of 43 verses. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 43 verses — moderately common. It first appears in Ezra 4:24. Ranging over 5 senses, its meaning includes “royalty” and “reign”. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4437 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 →
- 43
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 43 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #671
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 671 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 43 occurrences in the concordance →
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 43 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 43 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: Kingdom 45×, Reign 4×, Realm 3×
- American Standard Version: Kingdom 42×, Reign 4×, Kingdoms 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Kingdom 30×, Over the kingdom 4×, Reign 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Kingdom 41×, Over the kingdom of 4×, A 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4437 across 57 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 H4437 across 57 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4437 across 54 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 3 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4437 across 66 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.
Senses in BDB
The 5 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.
- royalty, reign, kingdom
- royalty, kingship, kingly authority
- kingdom
- realm (of territory)
- reign (of time)
Word origin
מַלְכוּ n.f. royalty, reign, kingdom
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מלכות (malkûwth) (H4438) — kingdom.
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.
מִלְכוּ
- (מְלַךְ) consultation. Gen. R. s. 8; Yalk. ib. 13 (ref. to Gen. I, 26) לית הכא מ׳ this does not mean holding council (with the ministering angels). e.g. Genesis 1:26
מַלְכוּ
- , v. מַלְכוּתָא
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 41 distinct written forms H4437 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4437, 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
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 32 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 43 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.
