מְצוֹלָה
depth
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 5 times (45%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute 3 times (27%)
- Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct 3 times (27%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 11 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4688 appears — 11 distinct verses across 7 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.
Exodus 1 verse
Nehemiah 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Psalms 5 verses
- Psalms 68:22 מִֽ/מְּצֻל֥וֹת prep + n c fp cs The Lord said, "I will bring you again from Bashan, I will bring you again from the depths of the sea;
- Psalms 69:2 מְ֭צוּלָה n c fs I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.
- Psalms 69:15 מְצוּלָ֑ה n c fs Don't let the flood waters overwhelm me, Neither let the deep swallow me up. Don't let the pit shut its mouth on me.
- Psalms 88:6 בִּ/מְצֹלֽוֹת prep + n c fp You have laid me in the lowest pit, In the darkest depths.
- Psalms 107:24 בִּ/מְצוּלָֽה prep + n c fs These see Yahweh's works, And his wonders in the deep.
Jonah 1 verse
Micah 1 verse
Zechariah 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.
At its core, מצולה (mᵉtsôwlâh) means “depth.” It first appears in Exodus 15:5. Spanning 11 verses in 7 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Psalms (45% of all occurrences). 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 H4688 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,210
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,210 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 11 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 11 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 64%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 27%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 9%
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: Deep 3×, Deeps 2×, Depths 2×
- American Standard Version: Depths 3×, Deep 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Depths 6×, Deep 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Deep 4×, Depths 2×, Depths of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4688 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4688 across 11 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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 H4688 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4688 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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.
- depth, the deep, the deep sea
Word origin
n.f. depth, deep;—abs. מְצוּלָה Jb 41:23 +; pl. abs. מְצוֹלֹת Ex 15:5; Ne 9:11, מְצֹלוֹת ψ 88:7; cstr. מְצוּלוֹת Zc 10:11, מְצֻלוֹת Mi 7:19 ψ 68:23;—depth, pl. מ׳ יָם depths of the sea Mi 7:19 ψ 68:23; abs. Ex 15:5 (of Red Sea) Ne 9:11 (id.); fig. of deep distress ψ 88:7 (‖ בּוֹר תַּחְתִּיּוֹת); מ׳ יְאֹר Zc 10:11 (i.e. of Nile); sg. = the deep sea, deep, ψ 107:24; Jon 2:4; Jb 41:23 (in hyperb. descript. of crocodile); depth of marsh, swamp, בִּיוֵן מ׳ ψ 69:3 in mire of (the) depth, fig. of distress (‖ מַעֲמַקֵּי־מַיִם), cf. מ׳ alone v 16 (‖ בְּאֵר).
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from צולה (tsûwlâh) (H6683) — ocean.
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.
מְצוּלָה I
- [precipitous declivity,] glen, shaft, fish-pond. B. Bath. 67ᵃ חולסית ומ׳ a sand-mound (for glass-making) and a glen (shaft for metal-digging; oth. opin. fish-pond); Arakh. 32ᵃ. Meg. 6ᵇ (missing in editions revised by censors, v. Rabb. D. S. a. l.) וצידו אחד חולסית ומ׳ (Ms. M. חרסית) and on the fourth side it (Rome) is bounded by sand-hills (clay-ground) and glens (or shafts).—Ber. 9ᵇ; Pes. 119ᵃ כמ׳ שאין בה דגה (דגים) (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. notes) like a pond without fish (oth. vers., v. next w.); Yalk. Gen. 154; Yalk. Kings 204; v. מְצוּדָה. Mekh. B’shall., Shir., s. 5 (ref. to Ex. XV, 5, a. Jon. II, 4) יונה ירד למ׳ אחת וכ׳ Jonah went down into one whirlpool, but they (the Egyptians) into two; Yalk. Ex. 246.—Pl. מְצוּלוֹת, מְצוֹ׳. Mekh. l. c. ואין מ׳ אלא מים עזים m. means rapid waters; (Yalk. l. c. ואין מצולה וכ׳); a. e. e.g. Exodus 15:5
מְצוּלָה II
- (נָצַל; cmp. נִיצּוֹלֶת) refuse, threshed-out halms, husks &c. Ber. 9ᵇ; Pes. 119ᵃ כמ׳ שאין בה דגן Var. lect. (v. Rabb. D. S. a. l. notes) like husks without grain.—Pl. מְצוּלוֹת. Tosef. Ter. X, 3 (Var. ed. Zuck. ניצולית), v. נִיצּוֹלֶת.
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 10 distinct written forms H4688 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מְצוּלָ֑ה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Job 41:31 | 2 |
| בִ/מְצוֹלֹ֖ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Exodus 15:5 | 1 |
| בִ/מְצוֹלֹ֛ת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Nehemiah 9:11 | 1 |
| בִּ/מְצֹלֽוֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute | Psalms 88:6 | 1 |
| בִּ/מְצֻל֥וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Micah 7:19 | 1 |
| בִּ/מְצוּלָֽה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 107:24 | 1 |
| מְ֭צוּלָה | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Psalms 69:2 | 1 |
| מְצוּל֣וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Zechariah 10:11 | 1 |
| מְצוּלָה֙ | Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Jonah 2:3 | 1 |
| מִֽ/מְּצֻל֥וֹת | Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct | Psalms 68:22 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
