מִקְנֶה
cattle
‘cattle’ 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.
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
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H4735 appears in the Book of Psalms — 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.
Psalms
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.
מקנה — transliterated miqneh — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “cattle.” Its English rendering has broadened — “cattle” classically, “livestock” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions; see the renderings breakdown. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 64 verses — moderately common. More than a third of its appearances fall in Genesis. 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 H4735 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 →
- 64
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 64 distinct verses.
- 16 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 16 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #523
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 523 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 64 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 64 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 39 verses · 61%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 13 verses · 20%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 12 verses · 19%
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: Cattle 45×, Flocks 2×, Have cattle 2×
- American Standard Version: Cattle 40×, Possessions 4×, 's cattle 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Livestock 41×, Cattle 6×, Flocks 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Livestock 46×, Cattle 9×, Livestock of 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4735 across 75 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 20 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 H4735 across 75 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 23 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 H4735 across 69 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 17 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 6 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4735 across 77 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 9 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 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. cattle in gen., including cows, sheep, horses, asses, camels (any or all of them), as purchasable domestic animals, Gn 47:16(×2), 17(×2); Ex 9:3 + (J), 10:26 (E), Dt 3:19 (not in P), Jb 1:3 ψ 78:48 Je 9:9; 1 Ch 5:12 +; so prob. ישֵׁב אֹהֶל וּמִקְנֶה Gn 4:20 (J) of nomads, מִקְנֵה הַבְּהֵמָה Gn 47:18 (J). e.g. Genesis 47:16
- 2. specif. of cows, sheep, and goats in herds and flocks Gn 13:2 (J), 31:9 (E), v 18 36:7; 46:6 Nu 32:1 (all P), Is 30:23 +; אַנְשֵׁי מ׳ Gn 46:32, 34 (J), שָׂרֵי מ׳ Gn 47:6 (P), cf. 1 Ch 28:1; רֹעֵי מ׳ Gn 13:7(×2) (J); disting. from בְּהֵמָה Nu 31:9 (P), 32:26; 2 K 3:17; from קנין Jos 14:4 (P); Ez 38:12, 13; from both Gn 34:23; 36:6 (P); מ׳ צאן ובקר 2 Ch 32:29 מ׳ בקר וצאן Ec 2:7; מ׳ צאן ומ׳ בקר Gn 26:14; 47:17 (J); sheep only Gn 29:7 (J); Nu 32:16 (E).—מִקְנֵה הַשָּׂדֶה Gn 49:32 (P) read מִקְנַת; מִקְנֶת אַף על עוֹלֶה Jb 36:33 read מַקְנֶה (Hiph. Pt.), or מְקַנֶּה (Pi. Pt.) metapl. from קנא, Hi Bö Di Du; 1 S 30:20 del. הַמּ׳ 𝔊 We Dr al., v. especially HPS. e.g. Genesis 13:2
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. Ex 10:26 cattle;—abs. מ׳ Gn 46:32 +; cstr. מִקְנֵה Gn 13:7 +; sf. מִקְנֵהוּ Gn 3:18 +, מִקְנֶיךָ Is 30:23 (Ges§ 93 ss), etc.; pl. sf. (but v. Köii. 112 f.) מִקְנַי Ex 17:3 +, מִקְנֵיכֶם Gn 47:16 +, etc.;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from קנה (qânâh) (H7069) — to acquire.
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.
מִקְנֶה
- property, esp. cattle. Num. R. s. 22 היה להם מ׳ גדול they had a large stock of cattle; a. e.
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 62 distinct written forms H4735 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.
The 60 most common forms are shown; 2 rarer forms follow in the full concordance.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4735, 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
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 8 — not the complete family. 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 61 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 64 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 4:20
- Exodus 9:3
- Numbers 20:19
- Deuteronomy 3:19
- Joshua 1:14
- Judges 6:5
- 1 Samuel 23:5
- 2 Kings 3:17
- 1 Chronicles 5:9
- 2 Chronicles 26:10
- Job 1:3
- Ecclesiastes 2:7
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.
