מְצָד
stronghold
also: fort, fastness fuller range ↓
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
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where H4679 appears in the Construct state in the Book of 1 Samuel. Filtered view — show all forms. 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
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.
The Hebrew noun מצד centers on the idea of “stronghold.” First canonically at Judges 6:2, it enters the text early. It turns up in 10 verses across 5 books, an uncommon footprint. The word gravitates to 1 Samuel (30%), then 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah. Beyond “stronghold” it also covers “fort” and “fastness” — see its full sense range. Dig into 10-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4679 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 →
- 10
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 10 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- 1 Samuel 3 verses 30%
- 1 Chronicles 3 verses 30%
- Jeremiah 2 verses 20%
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 10 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 70%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 30%
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: Strong holds 4×, Hold 2×
- American Standard Version: Strongholds 4×, Stronghold 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Strongholds 7×, Fortress 2×, Stronghold 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Stronghold 3×, Strongholds 3×, Strongholds of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4679 across 11 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4679 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H4679 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4679 across 8 tagged occurrences — 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 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.
- 1. mountain-fastness
- 2. more gen., stronghold
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
מְצָד, מְצַד n.f. fastness, stronghold (prop. hunting-place ?)
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from צוד (tsûwd) (H6679) — to hunt.
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.
מְצָד
- , v. מְצוּדָה
צַד
- צדד to join; cmp. סַד) side, border. B. Mets. 11ᵃ עומד בצד שדהו he was standing at the border of his field. Snh. IV, 2 in capital cases מתחילין מן הצד they begin to take the votes from the side bench (the junior judges), opp. הגדול. Ib. 36ᵃ (in Chald. dict.) כולהו … מן הצד הוו מתחלי they began all their voting with the youngest; Gitt. 59ᵃ. Snh. 38ᵇ תשובתן בצִידָּן, v. פָּקַר. Gen. R. s. 8 בצִדָּהּ, v. פִּתְחוֹן. Nidd. 22ᵇ מצד אחד, v. פָּנָה. Kidd. 74ᵇ מצידה (Var. in Ar. s. v. צד: מצמדה), v. תַּבְרָא.—B. Mets. 63ᵃ, a. fr. צד אחד בריבית, v. רִבִּית. B. Kam. I, 1, a. fr. הצד השוה שבהן the points common to both, v. הֲרֵי I. Kidd. 78ᵃ, a. e. מה להצד השוה וכ׳ what is the common point? Ib. ומייתי לה במה הצד and proves it by analogy from the common point. Ber. 35ᵃ מה להצד … שכן יש בו צד מזבח what is the common point? that it may eventually be used for the altar?; ואתי נמי זית … צד מזבח and so is ‘olive’ included, which is eventually used on the altar (as oil). B. Mets. 115ᵃ לצד שני another interpretation.—מן הצד sideways, in an unusual manner, indirectly. Sabb. 43ᵇ, v. טִלְטוּל h. Ib. 47ᵇ בנין מן הצד an indirect way of building (putting up a folding bed); a. fr.—כאיזה צד, כאי זה צד, כיזה צד, v. כֵּיצַד.—Pl. v. צְדָד
צַד ²
- ch., v. צֵיד
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 9 distinct written forms H4679 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בַּ/מְּצָד֔וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 23:14 | 2 |
| בַ/מְּצָדוֹת֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | 1 Samuel 23:19 | 1 |
| בִּ/מְצָד֥וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | 1 Samuel 23:29 | 1 |
| בַּ/מְצָ֑ד | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 11:7 | 1 |
| הַ/מְּצָדֽוֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Judges 6:2 | 1 |
| וְ/הַ/מְּצָד֖וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Jeremiah 48:41 | 1 |
| לַ/מְצַ֨ד | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 12:8 | 1 |
| לַ/מְצָ֖ד | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 12:16 | 1 |
| מְצָד֥וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Isaiah 33:16 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4679, 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 5 — 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 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 10 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.
