מְסִלָּה
highway
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.
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).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 13 times (48%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 6 times (22%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct 5 times (19%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 3 times (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 27 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4546 appears — 26 distinct verses across 12 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.
Numbers 1 verse
Judges 5 verses
- Judges 5:20 מִ/מְּסִלּוֹתָ֔/ם prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3mp From the sky the stars fought, From their courses they fought against Sisera.
- Judges 20:31 בַּֽ/מְסִלּוֹת֙ prep det + n c fp The children of Benjamin went out against the people, and were drawn away from the city; and they began to strike and kill of the people, as at other times, in the highways, of which one goes up to Bethel, and the other to Gibeah, in the field, about thirty men of Israel.
- Judges 20:32 הַֽ/מְסִלּֽוֹת ptcl def.art + n c fp The children of Benjamin said, They are struck down before us, as at the first. But the children of Israel said, Let us flee, and draw them away from the city to the highways.
- Judges 20:45 בַּֽ/מְסִלּ֔וֹת prep det + n c fp They turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon: and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men, and followed hard after them to Gidom, and struck of them two thousand men.
- Judges 21:19 לִ/מְסִלָּ֔ה prep + n c fs They said, Behold, there is a feast of Yahweh from year to year in Shiloh, which is on the north of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.
1 Samuel 1 verse
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 20:12 הַֽ/מְסִּלָּ֑ה הַֽ/מְסִלָּ֤ה ptcl def.art + n c fs ptcl def.art + n c fs Amasa lay wallowing in his blood in the midst of the highway. When the man saw that all the people stood still, he carried Amasa out of the highway into the field, and cast a garment over him, when he saw that everyone who came by him stood still.
- 2 Samuel 20:13 הַֽ/מְסִלָּ֑ה ptcl def.art + n c fs When he was removed out of the highway, all the people went on after Joab, to pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri.
2 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 2 verses
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 1 verse
Proverbs 1 verse
Isaiah 9 verses
- Isaiah 7:3 מְסִלַּ֖ת n c fs cs Then Yahweh said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you, and Shearjashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway of the fuller's field.
- Isaiah 11:16 מְסִלָּ֔ה n c fs There shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, who shall remain, from Assyria; like as there was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.
- Isaiah 19:23 מְסִלָּ֤ה n c fs In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians.
- Isaiah 33:8 מְסִלּ֔וֹת n c fp The highways lie waste, the wayfaring man ceases: [the enemy] has broken the covenant, he has despised the cities, he doesn't regard man.
- Isaiah 36:2 בִּ/מְסִלַּ֖ת prep + n c fs cs The king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to king Hezekiah with a great army. He stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field.
- Isaiah 40:3 מְסִלָּ֖ה n c fs The voice of one who cries, Prepare you in the wilderness the way of Yahweh; make level in the desert a highway for our God.
- Isaiah 49:11 וּ/מְסִלֹּתַ֖/י conj + n c fp cs + sfx pers 1cs I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted.
- Isaiah 59:7 בִּ/מְסִלּוֹתָֽ/ם prep + n c fp cs + sfx pers 3mp Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their paths.
- Isaiah 62:10 הַֽ/מְסִלָּה֙ ptcl def.art + n c fs Go through, go through the gates; prepare you the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up an ensign for the peoples.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Joel 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.
“highway” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מסלה (mᵉçillâh). Its earliest occurrence is Numbers 20:19. It turns up in 26 verses across 12 books, a moderately common footprint. It concentrates in Isaiah, which alone accounts for 35% of its uses. It clusters with סלל, מסלול and סל under a shared root. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4546 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 →
- 26
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 26 distinct verses.
- 12 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 12 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,226
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,226 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 26 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 26 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 20 verses · 77%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 5 verses · 19%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 4%
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: Highway 10×, Highways 5×, Causeway 2×
- American Standard Version: Highway 10×, Highways 5×, Causeway 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Highway 8×, Road 7×, Roads 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Highway 7×, Road 5×, Highways 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4546 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H4546 across 27 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H4546 across 27 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4546 across 28 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.
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.
- highway, raised way, public road
Word origin
n.f. highway;—מ׳ Is 11:16 + 12 times; cstr. מְסִלַּת Is 7:3 + 3 times; sf. מְסִלָּתוֹ Jo 2:8; pl. מְסִלּוֹת Is 33:8 + 5 times; sf. מְסִלֹּתַי Is 49:11; מְסִלּוֹתָם Ju 5:20; Is 59:7;—raised way, highway, public road (never of street in city) Nu 20:19; Ju 20:31, 32, 45; 21:19; 1 S 6:12; 2 S 20:12(×2), 13; 2 K 18:17 = Is 36:2, 1 Ch 26:16, 18; Is 7:3; 11:16; 19:23; 33:8; 49:11; 59:7; Je 31:21; ישּׁר מ׳ Is 40:3; סלל מ׳ Is 62:10; in a fig. sense, of the courses of the stars Ju 5:20; the march of locusts Jo 2:8; the conduct of the upright Pr 16:17; of the ascents to Zion in the mind of the pious ψ 84:6 (𝔊: Bae reads מַעֲלוֹת).—In 2 Ch 9:11 מסלות is error for מִסְעָד(ות) of ‖ 1 K 10:12.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from סלל (çâlal) (H5549) — to exalt.
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.
מְסִלָּה
- , v. מְסִילָּה
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 26 distinct written forms H4546 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 H4546, 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
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 7 — 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 26 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 26 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
- Numbers 20:19
- Judges 5:20
- 1 Samuel 6:12
- 2 Samuel 20:12
- 2 Kings 18:17
- 1 Chronicles 26:16
- 2 Chronicles 9:11
- Psalms 84:5
- Proverbs 16:17
- Isaiah 7:3
- Jeremiah 31:21
- Joel 2:8
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.
