מָעַךְ
to press
‘to press’ 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 Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘not to be offered to’
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (33%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (33%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 3 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4600 appears — 3 distinct verses across 3 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.
Leviticus 1 verse
1 Samuel 1 verse
Ezekiel 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.
“to press” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb מעך (mâʻak). A scarce word — 3 verses in all of the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Leviticus, which alone accounts for 33% of its uses. Scripture first uses it in Leviticus 22:24. Read the stem: it spans 2 stems, including Qal and Pual. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4600 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 →
- 3
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 3 distinct verses.
- 3 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 3 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,179
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,179 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 3 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 3 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 2 verses · 67%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 33%
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: Is bruised 1×, Pressed 1×, Stuck 1×
- American Standard Version: Hath its stones bruised 1×, Pressed 1×, Spear stuck 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Bruised 1×, Stuck 1×, Were fondled 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Bruised 1×, Was pressed 1×, Were squeezed 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4600 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4600 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4600 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4600 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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.
Qal
- not to be offered to י׳, reference to emasculation; and his spear pressed (thrust) into the ground
Pual
- . there were their breasts squeezed
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
[ מָעַךְ ] vb. press, squeeze
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
מָעַךְ
- to crush; to dissolve by rubbing. Lam. R. to I, 1 מָעֲכוּ את הזקן (העיר) they crushed an old man to death. Yeb. 34ᵇ מוֹעֲכוֹת, v. infra. Tosef. Pes. IV, 3, v. infra.—Part. pass. מָעוּךְ; f. מְעוּכָה; pl. מְעוּכִים, מְעוּכִין; מְעוּכוֹת dissolved by rubbing, crushed. Nidd. 22ᵇ מ׳ ע"י הדחק a foetus which can be squashed by rubbing, although with some difficulty. Y. Dem. VI, 25ᵈ top מ׳ חיבור a substance pressed into a mass (as olives in the vat) is considered as connected, v. חִיבּוּר. Midr. Till. to Ps. LXXIII, 4 מעוכה ed. Bub., v. קָטַף.—Lam. R. l. c. פסח מעוכין (not מעוכן) the Passover of the crushed (crowded); Pes. 64ᵇ שנתמעך … פסח מ׳ when one old man was crushed to death, and they called it &c. Tosef. ib. IV, 3 נכנסו ישראל … פסח מ׳ the Israelites entered the Temple mount and it could not contain all of them, and they called it &c.; (Var. מוֹעֲכִין the Passover of the crushers; Var. מוכין); Pes. l. c., v. מְעוּבֶּה.
- 1. same. Nidd. l. c. מְמַעַכְתּוֹ ברוק וכ׳ she tests the nature of the foetus by pressing and rubbing with her nail moistened with spittle. Y. Yoma VIII, 44ᵈ bot. צריך למַעֵךְ את חללה you must squeeze the core of the olive together (to be used as a standard of size). Yeb. 34ᵇ תמר באצבע מִיעֲכָה Tamar destroyed her virginity by friction with her finger; (ib. מוֹעֲכוֹת brides acting like Tamar). Y. Sabb. XX, 17ᶜ bot. מְמַעֵךְ (Bab. ib. 140ᵃ מַמְחוֹ, v. מָחָה). Keth. 36ᵇ; Gitt. 81ᵃ.—Esth. R. to I, 14, v. מָרַס; a. e.
- 2. (cmp. מוּךְ) to lower. Ber. 45ᵃ יְמַעֵךְ הקורא קולו (Var. יַמְעִיךְ Hif.), v. נָמַךְ.
- 1. to be crushed, squashed, rubbed off. Y. Maasr. I, 48ᵈ bot., v. מָסַס. Pes. l. c., v. supra. Tosef. Mikv. VI (VII), 14 והן מִתְמַעֲכִין על הבגדים quot. in R. S. to Mikv. IX, 2 (ed. Zuck. מתמעטין) they are rubbed against (and stick to) the garments, v. גֵּץ. Men. X, 4 (66ᵃ) שלא יִתְמַעֵךְ that its grains may not be crushed; a. e.
- 2. to be lowered, flattened. Nidd. 47ᵃ, sq., v. כַּף.
מְעַךְ
- Part. pass. מְעִיךְ having crushed genitals. Targ. Y. Lev. XXII, 24.
- same. Gen. R. s. 57, end; Yalk. ib. 102 (play on מעכה, Gen. XXII, 24) מַעֲכוֹן crush them; v. גַּחֲמוֹן e.g. Genesis 22:24
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 3 distinct written forms H4600 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/מָע֤וּךְ | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Leviticus 22:24 | 1 |
| מְעוּכָֽה | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 26:7 | 1 |
| מֹעֲכ֣וּ | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Ezekiel 23:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4600, 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.
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 → 2 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 3 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 3 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.
