מִקְוֶה
hope
‘hope’ 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
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.
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4723 appears in the Book of Ezra — 1 distinct verse. 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.
Ezra
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.
“hope” is the headline sense of the Hebrew noun מקוה (miqveh). First canonically at Genesis 1:10, it enters the text early. With 10 verses in 8 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It concentrates in Jeremiah, which alone accounts for 30% of its uses. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. See the sense tree, 10-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4723 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.
- 8 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 8 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,101
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 10 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 10 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 40%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 3 verses · 30%
- 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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 3 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†: Hope 4×, Linen yarn 4×
- American Standard Version†: Hope 3×, Droves 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Hope 5×, Kue 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Kue 4×, Hope 2×, Hope of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4723 across 12† 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 H4723 across 10† 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 H4723 across 12† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4723 across 11† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
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 0 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.
מקוה I [m.] hope
מקוה II [m.] collection, collected mass (P)
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. I, II. מִקְוֶה, מִקְוָה v. II. קוה.
I. n.[m.] hope;—abs. מ׳ 1 Ch 29:15 Ezr 10:2; cstr. in phr. מִקְוֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל, epithet of י׳, Je 14:8; 17:13, cf. 50:7.
II. n.[m.] collection, collected mass (P);—cstr. מִקְוֵה Gn 1:10 (מִקְוֶה also v 9, for מָקוֹם, according to 𝔊 Ball), Ex 7:19; Lv 11:36, all of water.—מ׳ 1 K 10:28(×2) = מִקְוֵא 2 Ch 1:16 (company of merchants; drove of horses), v. קֹוֶה.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קוה (qâvâh) (H6960) — to wait.
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.
מִקְוֶה
- gathering of water, esp. the ritual bath of purification. Yoma VIII, 9 (play on מקוה hope, Jer. XVII, 13) מה מ׳ מטהר וכ׳ as the bath purifies the unclean, so does the Lord &c. Ib. 31ᵃ מי מ׳ ארבעים סאה the contents of a ritual bath must be forty S’ah; Num. R. s. 18. Mikv. I, 7 שוה למ׳ וכ׳ has the qualification of a ritual miḳveh when gathered in a pond, contrad. to מַעְיָן; a. v. fr.—Trnsf. means of purification. Kidd. 64ᵃ בנות ישראל מִקְוֵה טהרה וכ׳ daughters of common Israelites are the means of purity (reinstatement to priestly status) for (the issue of) degraded priests, i.e. the daughter of an Israelite woman and a degraded priest may marry into priesthood; ib. 77ᵃ; Tosef. ib. V, 3; a. e.—Pl. מִקְווֹת, מִקְוָאוֹת, מִקְוָו׳. Y. Ter. IV, 43ᵃ bot. שני מקוות; Mikv. II, 3 שני מ׳ וכ׳ two adjacent reservoirs one of which contains &c. Ib. I, 1; a. fr.—Miḳvaoth, name of a treatise of Mishnah and Tosefta of the Order of Tohăroth. e.g. Jeremiah 17:13
מִקְוֵה I
- (v. preced.)
- 1. gathering of merchants, fair, merchants’ station;
- 2. goods at the fair. Targ. I Kings X, 28.
- 3. reservoir.—Pl. מִקְוַיָּא. Targ. Is. XXII, 11 (h. text מִקְוָה).
*מִקְוֵה II
- (קְהָא) acid. Keth. 75ᵃ Ar., v. קִיּוּהָא.
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 12 distinct written forms H4723 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/לְ/מִקְוֵ֥ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Genesis 1:10 | 1 |
| וּ/מִ/קְוֵ֕א | Noun, Proper | 2 Chronicles 1:16 | 1 |
| וּ/מִ/קְוֵ֕ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 10:28 | 1 |
| וּ/מִקְוֵ֥ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 50:7 | 1 |
| מִ/קְוֵ֖ה | Noun, Proper | 1 Kings 10:28 | 1 |
| מִ/קְוֵ֥א | Noun, Proper | 2 Chronicles 1:16 | 1 |
| מִקְוֵ֤ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 17:13 | 1 |
| מִקְוֵ֥ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Exodus 7:19 | 1 |
| מִקְוֵה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Leviticus 11:36 | 1 |
| מִקְוֵה֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 14:8 | 1 |
| מִקְוֶ֥ה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezra 10:2 | 1 |
| מִקְוֶֽה | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 29:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4723, 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
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 6 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 10 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
- Genesis 1:10
- Exodus 7:19
- Leviticus 11:36
- 1 Kings 10:28
- 1 Chronicles 29:15
- 2 Chronicles 1:16
- Ezra 10:2
- Jeremiah 14:8
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.
