מָקוֹר
spring
‘spring’ is one of 5 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-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
- 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.
6 verses where H4726 appears in the Construct state in the Book of Proverbs. 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.
Proverbs
- Proverbs 5:18 מְקוֹרְ/ךָ֥ n c ms cs + sfx pers 2ms Let your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
- Proverbs 10:11 מְק֣וֹר n c ms cs The mouth of the righteous is a spring of life, But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
- Proverbs 13:14 מְק֣וֹר n c ms cs The teaching of the wise is a spring of life, To turn from the snares of death.
- Proverbs 14:27 מְק֣וֹר n c ms cs The fear of Yahweh is a fountain of life, Turning people from the snares of death.
- Proverbs 16:22 מְק֣וֹר n c ms cs Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it, But the punishment of fools is their folly.
- Proverbs 18:4 מְק֣וֹר n c ms cs The words of a man's mouth are like deep waters. The fountain of wisdom is like a flowing brook.
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.
מקור — transliterated mâqôwr — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “spring.” Its English rendering has broadened — “fountain” classically, “fountain of” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 17 verses — uncommon. More than a third of its appearances fall in Proverbs. It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. 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 H4726 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,612
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,612 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 9 verses · 53%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 6 verses · 35%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 12%
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: Fountain 6×, Is a fountain 2×, Spring 2×
- American Standard Version: Fountain 4×, Is a fountain 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Fountain 7×, Is a fountain 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Fountain of 5×, Fountain 4×, Flow of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4726 across 18 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H4726 across 17 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 10 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 H4726 across 18 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4726 across 17 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.
8 senses and sub-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 8 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. spring of water:
- a. fig., of י׳, מ׳ מַיִם חַיִים Je 2:13; 17:13, cf. מ׳ חַיִּים ψ 36:10; מ׳ חַיִּים (more gen.), Pr 10:11; 13:14; 14:27; 16:22 + 18:4 (so read for מ׳ חָכְמָה 𝔊 Heb Codd Toy). e.g. Jeremiah 2:13
- b. fig. of purification Zc 13:1. e.g. Zechariah 13:1
- c. מָקוֹר מָשְׁחָת Pr 25:26 (fig.; + מַעְיָן). e.g. Proverbs 25:26
- d. fig. of source of life and vigour Ho 13:15 Je 51:36; of a nation’s orig. source, stock ψ 68:27 (Kay Che, of temple); source of joy Pr 5:18 (fig. of wife; ‖ אֵשֶׁת). e.g. Hosea 13:15
- 2. fig. of eye, מְקוֹר דִּמְעָה, Je 8:23. e.g. Jeremiah 8:23
- 3. source of menstruous blood, מְ׳ דָּמֶיהָ Lv 20:18, so מְקֹרָהּ v 18 (H). e.g. Leviticus 20:18
- 4. = flow of blood after child-birth מְ׳ דָּמֶיהָ 12:7 (P). e.g. Leviticus 12:7
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
n.m. Zc 13:1 spring, fountain (app. orig. well);—abs. מ׳ Zc 13:1; Pr 25:26; cstr. מְקוֹר Je 2:13 +, מְקֹר Lv 12:7; 20:18; sf. מְקוֹרוֹ Ho 13:15, etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קור (qûwr) (H6979) — to dig.
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.
מָקוֹר
- , v. קָרַר I) fountain, esp. = מְקוֹר דָּם, the interior of the womb from where the menses are discharged. Nidd. 65ᵇ. Ib. 66ᵃ; a. fr.—[Pesik. B’shall., p. 89ᵇ מקור דטבריא, v. מוֹקְדָא I.]
מַקּוֹר
- (נָקַר, v. next w.) beak, a tool for whetting millstones. Kel. XXIX, 6 (not מקיר).
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 H4726 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מְק֣וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 2:13 | 9 |
| וּ/מָק֣וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Proverbs 25:26 | 1 |
| מְק֥וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 17:13 | 1 |
| מְקֹרָ֣/הּ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Leviticus 20:18 | 1 |
| מְקוֹר/וֹ֙ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Hosea 13:15 | 1 |
| מְקוֹרְ/ךָ֥ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Proverbs 5:18 | 1 |
| מְקוֹרָֽ/הּ | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Jeremiah 51:36 | 1 |
| מִ/מְּק֥וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 68:26 | 1 |
| מִ/מְּקֹ֣ר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Leviticus 12:7 | 1 |
| מָק֣וֹר | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Zechariah 13:1 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4726, 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 6 — 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 16 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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.
