מַעֲרָה
battle
‘battle’ 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
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H4630 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
1 Samuel 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.
מערה (maʻărâh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “battle.” The Hebrew Bible uses it only 1 verse. 1 Samuel dominates its distribution — 1 of 1 verses. Scripture uses it exactly once, at 1 Samuel 17:23. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4630 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 100%
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 2 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†: not separately translated
- Berean Standard Bible†: Ranks 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Does not render H4630 with a distinct English word (not separately translated in its 1 tagged occurrence).
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4630 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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 5 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.
מערה I [m.] bare, naked place (hence Μαραθών, Marathon, according to LewyFremdw. 144)
- 1. bare place, or space: cstr. מִמַּעֲרֵה־גָ֑בַע Ju 20:33 bare (open) space of Gebaʿ (si vera l.; but v. ii. מַעֲרָב); כְּמַעַר־אִישׁ 1 K 7:36 according to the clear space on each (plate, v. לוּחַ). e.g. Judges 20:33
- 2. sf. מַעְרֵךְ Na 3:5 fig. of Nineveh (pudenda exposed in shameful punishment; cf. עֶרְוָה). e.g. Nahum 3:5
מערה II row, rank, battle-line
- 1.
- a. מ׳ battle-line 1 S 4:2, 12, 16(×2); וַיָּ֫רָץ הַמּ׳ 17:22 and he ran to the battle-line, so v 28 (on ref. here to Isr.’s line cf. HPS), מ׳ לִקְרַאת מ׳ v 21; עֹדְרֵי מ׳ 1 Ch 12:39 (van d. H. v 38); nearly = battle הַחַיִל הַיֹּצֵא אֶל־הַמּ׳ 1 S 17:20. e.g. 1 Samuel 4:2
- b. pl. ranks = army; cstr. מַעַרְכוֹת יִשׂ׳ 1 S 17:10, 45, מַעַרְכֹת יִשׂ׳ v 8; מ׳ אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים v 26, 36; מ׳ פְּלִשְׁתִּים 23:3 and 17:23 Qr, so 𝔊A (v. om. B) 𝔙 𝔗; sg. 𝔊L 𝔖 (> Kt מערות). e.g. 1 Samuel 17:10
- 2. נֵרוֹת הַמַּעֲרָכָה Ex 39:37 lamps of the row, i.e. arranged in a row. Ju 6:26.* e.g. Exodus 39:37
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.[m.] bare, naked place (hence Μαραθών, Marathon, according to LewyFremdw. 144);—
I. n.f. row, rank, battle-line;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מערה (maʻăreh) (H4629) — bare place.
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.
מְעָרָה
- cave. Y. Ber. IV, 7ᵈ top, v. מַזֶּה II. Sabb. 33ᵇ חיזרו למְעַרְתְּכֶם go back to your cave (hiding place). Yeb. 119ᵇ; a. fr.—מְעָרַת המכפלה, v. מַכְפֵּלָה.—Pl. מְעָרוֹת. M. Kat. 5ᵇ; a. fr.
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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4630, 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
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 → 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 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.
