מַ֫עַן
for the sake of
‘for the sake of’ is one of 5 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
- Preposition
- A relational word (e.g. “in,” “to,” “from”) governing a noun.
Every verse where H4616 appears in the Book of Exodus — 16 distinct verses. 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
- Exodus 1:11 לְמַ֥עַן prep Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.
- Exodus 4:5 לְמַ֣עַן prep "That they may believe that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you."
- Exodus 8:10 לְמַ֣עַן prep He said, "Tomorrow." He said, "Be it according to your word, that you may know that there is none like Yahweh our God.
- Exodus 8:22 לְמַ֣עַן prep I will set apart in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there; to the end you may know that I am Yahweh in the midst of the earth.
- Exodus 9:16 וּ/לְמַ֛עַן conj + prep but indeed for this cause I have made you stand: to show you my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth;
- Exodus 9:29 לְמַ֣עַן prep Moses said to him, "As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands to Yahweh. The thunders shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that you may know that the earth is Yahweh's.
- Exodus 10:1 לְמַ֗עַן prep Yahweh said to Moses, "Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I may show these my signs in the midst of them,
- Exodus 10:2 וּ/לְמַ֡עַן conj + prep and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your son's son, what things I have done to Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that you may know that I am Yahweh."
- Exodus 11:7 לְמַ֨עַן֙ prep But against any of the children of Israel a dog won't even bark or move its tongue, against man or animal; that you may know that Yahweh makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel.
- Exodus 11:9 לְמַ֛עַן prep Yahweh said to Moses, "Pharaoh won't listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt."
- Exodus 13:9 לְמַ֗עַן prep It shall be for a sign to you on your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that the law of Yahweh may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand Yahweh has brought you out of Egypt.
- Exodus 16:4 לְמַ֧עַן prep Then said Yahweh to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from the sky for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law, or not.
- Exodus 16:32 לְמַ֣עַן prep Moses said, "This is the thing which Yahweh has commanded, 'Let an omer-full of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt."
- Exodus 20:12 לְמַ֨עַן֙ prep "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.
- Exodus 23:12 לְמַ֣עַן prep "Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your handmaid, and the alien may be refreshed.
- Exodus 33:13 לְמַ֥עַן prep Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you, so that I may find favor in your sight: and consider that this nation is your people."
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.
מען — transliterated maʻan — is a Hebrew word carrying the sense “for the sake of.” BDB distinguishes 5 senses for it. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 252 verses — common. Debuting at Genesis 12:13, it then recurs through the corpus. It shares a root with ענה, מענה and ענה. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4616 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 →
- 252
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 252 distinct verses.
- 29 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 29 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #182
- by frequency
- Top 250 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 182 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 252 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Deuteronomy 44 verses 17%
- Ezekiel 35 verses 14%
- Psalms 32 verses 13%
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 252 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 127 verses · 50%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 73 verses · 29%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 52 verses · 21%
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: For 2×
- American Standard Version: For 2×, That 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: That 120×, Sake 30×, To 18×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: That 121×, Sake of 28×, Order to 20×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4616 across 9 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4616 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4616 across 254 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 21 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 17 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4616 across 267 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 11 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.
- purpose, intent
- for the sake of
- in view of, on account of
- for the purpose of, to the intent that, in order to conjunction
- to the end that
Word origin
[ מַ֫עַן ] subst. purpose, intent, only with לְ, in לְמַ֫עַן 271 prep. and conj. for the sake of, on account of, to the intent or in order that
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from ענה (ʻânâh) (H6030) — to answer.
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.
מען
- , Lev. R. s. 32 מתמענת, v. מָעַט.
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 38 distinct written forms H4616 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| לְמַ֣עַן | Preposition | Amos 5:14 | 60 |
| לְמַ֥עַן | Preposition | Amos 2:7 | 27 |
| לְמַ֖עַן | Preposition | Amos 1:13 | 25 |
| לְמַ֨עַן֙ | Preposition | Deuteronomy 6:18 | 25 |
| לְמַ֨עַן | Preposition | Amos 9:12 | 21 |
| לְמַ֤עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 5:33 | 16 |
| לְמַ֗עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 5:14 | 14 |
| לְמַעַן֩ | Preposition | Deuteronomy 12:28 | 12 |
| לְמַ֛עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 2:30 | 9 |
| לְ֝מַ֗עַן | Preposition | Proverbs 19:20 | 8 |
| לְמַ֧עַן | Preposition | Exodus 16:4 | 6 |
| לְ֭מַעַן | Preposition | Psalms 51:4 | 5 |
| וּ/לְמַ֖עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 6:2 | 4 |
| לְ֠מַעַן | Preposition | Ezekiel 14:11 | 4 |
| וּ/לְמַ֥עַן | Preposition | 1 Kings 11:13 | 3 |
| וּ/לְמַ֨עַן֙ | Preposition | Deuteronomy 5:16 | 3 |
| לְמַ֡עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 27:3 | 3 |
| לְמַֽעֲנִ֔/י | Preposition | 2 Kings 19:34 | 3 |
| לְמַֽעַן | Preposition | Nehemiah 6:13 | 3 |
| וּ/לְמַ֨עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 4:40 | 2 |
| לְמַ֜עַן | Preposition | Ezekiel 12:19 | 2 |
| הַ֭/לְמַעַנְ/ךָ | Preposition | Job 18:4 | 1 |
| וּ/לְמַ֛עַן | Preposition | Exodus 9:16 | 1 |
| וּ/לְמַ֜עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 9:5 | 1 |
| וּ/לְמַ֡עַן | Preposition | Exodus 10:2 | 1 |
| וּ/לְמַ֣עַן | Preposition | Deuteronomy 31:12 | 1 |
| וּ/לְמַ֤עַן | Preposition | Jeremiah 44:8 | 1 |
| לְמַ֕עַן | Preposition | Micah 6:5 | 1 |
| לְמַ֣עַנְ/כֶ֔ם | Preposition | Deuteronomy 3:26 | 1 |
| לְמַֽעֲנְ/ךָ֣ | Preposition | Daniel 9:19 | 1 |
| לְמַעֲנִ֑/י | Preposition | Isaiah 43:25 | 1 |
| לְמַעֲנִ֛/י | Preposition | Isaiah 48:11 | 1 |
| לְמַעֲנִ֧/י | Preposition | Isaiah 48:11 | 1 |
| לְמַעַן | Preposition | Ezekiel 21:10 | 1 |
| לְמַעַן֮ | Preposition | Leviticus 23:43 | 1 |
| לְמַעַנְ/כֶ֛ם | Preposition | Ezekiel 36:22 | 1 |
| לְמַעַנְ/כֶ֞ם | Preposition | Isaiah 43:14 | 1 |
| לְמַעַנְ/כֶ֣ם | Preposition | Ezekiel 36:32 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4616, 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 8 — not the complete family. 3 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 232 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 252 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
- Genesis 12:13
- Exodus 1:11
- Leviticus 17:5
- Numbers 15:40
- Deuteronomy 2:30
- Joshua 1:7
- Judges 2:22
- 1 Samuel 15:15
- 2 Samuel 13:5
- 1 Kings 2:3
- 2 Kings 8:19
- 1 Chronicles 28:8
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.
