מַסֵּכָה
molten image
‘molten image’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H4541 appears in the Book of Numbers — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Numbers
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.
מסכה — transliterated maççêkâh — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “molten image.” The King James Version usually renders it “molten image,” while modern versions prefer “molten” (Berean Standard Bible) and “molded image” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. Spanning 28 verses in 14 books, it ranks among the moderately common words of the Hebrew Bible. Debuting at Exodus 32:4, it then recurs through the corpus. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. See the sense tree, 28-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4541 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 →
- 28
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 28 distinct verses.
- 14 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 14 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,190
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,190 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 28 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 28 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 15 verses · 54%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 8 verses · 29%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 18%
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†: Molten image 9×, Molten images 8×, Molten 3×
- American Standard Version†: Molten images 7×, Molten image 6×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Molten 5×, Molten idol 5×, Cast images 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Molded image 6×, Molten metal 4×, Cast image 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4541 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4541 across 26† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 13 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 H4541 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4541 across 28† 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.
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 2 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.
מסכה I 1. libation
- 1. libation, with covenant sacrif. in making covenant Is 30:1 (= 1. נֶסֶךְ; see, however, sub II. [נָסַךְ]). e.g. Isaiah 30:1
- 2. molten metal, or image: עֵגֶל מַסֵּכָה molten calf Ex 32:4, 8; Dt 9:16; Ne 9:18, cf. ψ 106:19; אֱלֹהֵי מַסֵּכָה molten gods Ex 34:17; Lv 19:4; צַלְמֵי מ׳ Nu 33:52; פֶּסֶל וּמַסֵּכָה Dt 27:15; Ju 17:3, 4; 18:14; Na 1:14; 2 Ch 34:3, 4, elsewhere (variously) Dt 9:12; Ju 18:17, 18; 1 K 14:9; 2 K 17:16; 2 Ch 28:2; Is 30:22; 42:17; Ho 13:2; Hb 2:18. e.g. Exodus 32:4
מסכה II woven stuff, web, especially as covering
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
III. n.f. 1. libation; 2. molten metal, or image;—מ׳ Ex 32:4 +; cstr. מַסֵּכַת Is 30:22; pl. מַסֵּכוֹת 1 K 14:9 +; sf. מַסֵּכֹתָם Nu 33:52;—
IV. n.f. woven stuff, web, especially as covering;—abs. הַמּ׳ הַנְּסוּכָה עַל־ Is 25:7 the web that is woven over all the nations (i.e. mourning-veil, symb. of distress; ‖ הַלּוֹט הַלּוֹט); = bed-covering 28:20 (in fig.). Perhaps also לִנְסֹךְ מ׳ 30:1 weave a web (‖ לַעֲשׂוֹת עֵצָה, ref. to negotiations with Egypt (So 𝔙 Aq Ew De Che Di; > 𝔊 Ges Hi Kn Brd Du pour a libation; מ׳ not elsewhere = נֶסֶךְ).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from נסך (nâçak) (H5258) — to pour out.
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.
מַסֵּכָה I
- molten image. Snh. 103ᵇ (play on Is. XXVIII, 20 והמסכה וכ׳) כונס כנד מי הים תֵּעָשֶה לו מ׳ צרה should a molten image be made a rival to him ‘who gathers the waters of the sea together like heaps’?; Num. R. s. 7; Yoma 9ᵇ. Sifra K’dosh., beg. (idols are called) מ׳ ע"ש שהם ניסוכים massekhah, because they are cast. e.g. Isaiah 28:20
מַסֵּכָה II
- web, garment. Ex. R. s. 42, end (ref. to Ex. XXXII, 8) מ׳ רעה הֵסַכְתֶּן לדורות משתי וכ׳ a bad web have you woven for future generations (follows the Chaldaic translation).—V. מַסֶּכֶת. e.g. Exodus 32:8
*מַסֵּכָה III
- (homiletic play, = מַסֵּי כָה, v. אֲסִי) thus healing. Ex. R. s. 42, end [read:] לשון סורסי הוא … כך אני מרפא אותן וכ׳ (v. סוּרְסִי) it is a contraction; the Lord says, ‘Shall I thus cure them?’, as we read (Ex. XXXII, 8—9): ‘They have made themselves a molten calf’ … ‘and the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people’ (i.e. it is incurable). e.g. Exodus 32:8
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 19 distinct written forms H4541 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 H4541, 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
- נסיך nᵉçîyk H5257 libation
- נסך nâçak H5259 to weave
- נסך nᵉçak H5260 to pour out
- נסך neçek H5262 drink offering
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 27 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 28 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
- Exodus 32:4
- Leviticus 19:4
- Numbers 33:52
- Deuteronomy 9:12
- Judges 17:3
- 1 Kings 14:9
- 2 Kings 17:16
- 2 Chronicles 28:2
- Psalms 106:19
- Isaiah 25:7
- Hosea 13:2
- Nahum 1:14
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.
