מָן
manna
‘manna’ 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 Absolute-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.
- Particle
- A short function word — article, negation, interrogative, the sign of the direct object, and the like.
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.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 12 times (86%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 1 time (7%)
- Particle, Interrogative 1 time (7%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 14 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4478 appears — 12 distinct verses across 6 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.
Exodus 4 verses
- Exodus 16:15 מָ֣ן ptcl inter When the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, "What is it?" For they didn't know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread which Yahweh has given you to eat."
- Exodus 16:31 מָ֑ן n c ms The house of Israel called the name of it Manna, and it was like coriander seed, white; and its taste was like wafers with honey.
- Exodus 16:33 מָ֑ן n c ms Moses said to Aaron, "Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before Yahweh, to be kept throughout your generations."
- Exodus 16:35 הַ/מָּן֙ הַ/מָּן֙ ptcl def.art + n c ms ptcl def.art + n c ms The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land. They ate the manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan.
Numbers 3 verses
- Numbers 11:6 הַ/מָּ֥ן ptcl def.art + n c ms but now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all save this manna to look on.
- Numbers 11:7 וְ/הַ/מָּ֕ן conj + ptcl def.art + n c ms The manna was like coriander seed, and the appearance of it as the appearance of bdellium.
- Numbers 11:9 הַ/מָּ֖ן ptcl def.art + n c ms When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna fell on it.
Deuteronomy 2 verses
- Deuteronomy 8:3 הַ/מָּן֙ ptcl def.art + n c ms He humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you didn't know, neither did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh does man live.
- Deuteronomy 8:16 מָן֙ n c ms who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn't know; that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end:
Joshua 1 verse
Nehemiah 1 verse
Psalms 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.
“manna” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מן (mân). First canonically at Exodus 16:15, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 12 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Exodus. Carrying more than one sense, it rewards its full sense range. See the sense tree, 12-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4478 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 →
- 12
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 12 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,910
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,910 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 12 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 4 verses 33%
- Numbers 3 verses 25%
- Deuteronomy 2 verses 17%
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 12 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 9 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 17%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 8%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Manna 11×
- American Standard Version†: Manna 10×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Manna 11×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Manna 13×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4478 across 14† 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 H4478 across 14† 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4478 across 14† 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4478 across 15† 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.
מן I m. et loc. Mamre, only in Gn
- 1. in J only אֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא terebinths of M. (n.pr.m.?), Gn 13:18 (defined by אֲשֶׁר בְּחֶבְרוֹן), 18:1 (in both the dwelling-place of Abraham). e.g. Genesis 13:18
- 2. n.pr.m. in Gn 14:13 (אֵלֹנֵי מ׳ הָאֱמֹרִי), cf. v 24 (where ally of Abr.) e.g. Genesis 14:13
- 3. n.pr.loc. in P: near Abr.’s place of burial Gn 23:17; 25:9; 49:30; 50:13; appar. identified with Hebron 23:19; 35:27, cf. Di.—𝔊 Μαμβρη. e.g. Genesis 23:17
מן II in Ex 16
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
I. n.pr.m. et loc. Mamre, only in Gn:
I. n.m. Nu 11:9 manna ( = Arabic مَنٌّ, known to Beduin in Sin. Penin.; a juice exuding in heavy drops from twigs (some say also the leaves) of Ṭarfa (Ṭŭrfa) tree (tamarix gallica mannifera) in W. Sin. Penin., end of May and in June, sweet, sticky, honey-like; cf. Di Ex 16:36 RobBR i, 75, 115, 590 EbGS 233 ff., 574 ff. SocZMG xxxv. 1881, 254);—מ׳ abs. Ex 16:15 + 12 times, sf. מַנְךָ Ne 9:20:—manna: וַיֹּאמְרוּ מָן הוּא כִּי לֹא יָֽדְעוּ מַה־הוּא Ex 16:15; v 31, 33, 35(×2) Nu 11:6, 7, 9 (described Ex 16:14, 31 Nu 11:7; accomp. dew Ex 16:14 Nu 11:9); ceased after Israel reached Canaan Jos 5:12(×2); as 2nd acc. הֶאֱכִילְךָ אֶת־הַמָּן Dt 8:3, cf. v 16; וַיּמְטֵר עֲלֵיהֶם מָן לֶאֱכֹל ψ 78:24; וּמַנְךָ לֹא־מָנַעְתָּ מִפִּיהֶם Ne 9:20.
II. in Ex 16:15 (with reference to the manna) וַיֹּאמְרוּ אִישׁ אֶל־אָחִיו מָן הוּא כִּי לֹא יָֽדְעוּ מַה־הוּא, most prob. ‘what is it?’ the question being intended as a popular etym. of מָן ‘manna,’ based upon the late Aramaic ܡܳܢ What? (man is ‘Who?’ in Arabic, Aramaic (מַן, ܡܰܢ), Mand. (מאן), Ethiopic, ‘What?’ in these dialects being مَا, מָה, ܡܳܐ, מָא (Ethiopic ment); מָן in the sense of ‘What?’ must correspond to the later Syriac ܡܳܢ, contr. from ܡܳܐ ܕܶܝܢ, 𝔗 מָדֵין: Nö§ 68 WSG 125).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מה (mâh) (H4100) — what.
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.
מִן
- (b. h.) from, of; more (or less) than. Ab. Zar. 18ᵃ מן השמים ירחמו from heaven they will have mercy (on me), i.e. I trust in God. Sabb. 21ᵇ המהדרין מן המהדרין v. הָדַר.—מן המובחר, v. בָּחַר; מן המומחה, v. מוּמְחֶה.—Tem. 28ᵃ מן הבהמה להוציא וכ׳ ‘of the cattle’ (Lev. I, 2) intimates the exclusion of &c.; a. v. fr.—Prefix מִ־, מָי־, מֵ־, מֵי־ q. v.—מִנַּיִן, מִנַּיִין, מִינַּיִין (= b. h. מֵאַיִן, v. אַיִן) whence?, whence is it proven?—Yoma 32ᵃ מ׳ לחמש וכ׳ whence is derived the regulation about five immersions &c.? Ib. ומ׳ שכל טבילה וכ׳ and whence is the rule derived that each immersion requires &c.? Ib. 44ᵃ אין לי אלא … מ׳ this would prove to me only in favor of …, whence do you derive that the same applies to …?; a. v. fr. e.g. Leviticus 1:2
מִן ²
- Targ. Gen. I, 2; a. v. fr.—With suffixes of pers. pron. מִנִּי, מִי׳ from me; מִנָּךְ, מִי׳ from thee; מִנֵּיה, מִי׳ from him, it &c. Ib. XXII, 12. Ib. III, 3; a. fr.—Y. Ber. II, 5ᵃ bot. מן הן דסלק to where he had come from. Sabb. 80ᵇ מן דיליה דא ליה this came to him from his own doing. Sot. 40ᵃ ומאי נפקא ליך מִינָּהּ and what difference does it make? מִנִּי ומִנֵּיה יתקלס וכ׳ through myself and him the Most High is exalted. B. Kam. 18ᵃ קאזיל מיניה מיניה it was lost through its (the chicken’s) action alone. Y. Peah VII, 20ᵇ מיניה וביה הוא (the sweetness) is entirely its own (no honey has been added). Snh. 39ᵇ, v. אִבָּא; a. fr.—לא כולא מיניה, לא כל כמיניה it is not at all in his power; v. כּוֹלָא.—מן ד־ from the time that, after; from the fact that; when; because. Lam. R. to II, 2 מן דאכלון after they had eaten; a. v. fr.; v. מִדְּ־.
מָן I
- portion, food. Num. R. s. 12 (play on א̇ר̇ג̇מ̇ן̇) the sun שיצרו הקב"ה לארוג מן וכ׳ whom the Lord has created to weave (ripen) food for creatures; ואין מן אלא פירות וכ׳ man means fruits and food (with ref. to וימן, Dan. I, 5).—Esp. מָּן(הַ) the manna of the desert. Ex. R. s. 25. Tanḥ. B’shall. 20; Mekh. ib., Vayassa, s. 2 אוכלי המן those eating manna (not troubling themselves about to-morrow). Yoma 75ᵃ; a. fr. e.g. Daniel 1:5
מַן I
- (a day’s) support. Succ. 39ᵇ בכדי מן for as much only as is needed for the day. Ib. דהאי מ׳ וכ׳ that man means support, v. preced.—Esp. מַנָּא the manna. Targ. Ex. XVI, 31. Targ. Y. ib. 27; a. e. (some ed. מָנָא).
מַן
- who?, what?, v. מַאן. Targ. Gen. XXIV, 23. Ib. XXXIII, 8 (ed. Berl. מָא; oth. ed. מאן); a. fr.—Emphatic. (מָנָא) מְנָא. Targ. Ps. XXXIX, 5. Targ. Prov. IV, 19; a. fr.
מָן III
- thing, vessel, garment; coulter, v. מָאן.
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 9 distinct written forms H4478 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/מָּן֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 8:3 | 3 |
| מָ֑ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Exodus 16:31 | 3 |
| מָ֣ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 78:24 | 2 |
| הַ/מָּ֖ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 11:9 | 1 |
| הַ/מָּ֜ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Joshua 5:12 | 1 |
| הַ/מָּ֥ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 11:6 | 1 |
| וְ/הַ/מָּ֕ן | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Numbers 11:7 | 1 |
| וּ/מַנְ/ךָ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Nehemiah 9:20 | 1 |
| מָן֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 8:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4478, 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
- מא mâʼ H3964 what
- מדוע maddûwaʻ H4069 why
- מדי madday H4078 what is enough, sufficiency, enough
- מה mâh H4101 whatever
- מהה mâhahh H4102 to delay
- מי mîy H4310 who
- מתלאה mattᵉlâʼâh H4972 weariness
Derived from this word
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 → Showing 4 of 11 — not the complete family. 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 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 12 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.
