מָקַק
to rot
‘to rot’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Hiphil verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”). Here: ‘fester’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
1 verse where H4743 appears in the Hiphil stem in the Book of Zechariah. 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.
Zechariah
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.
מקק — transliterated mâqaq — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to rot.” Debuting at Leviticus 26:39, it then recurs through the corpus. Spanning 7 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Ezekiel (43% of all occurrences). Read the stem: it spans 2 stems, including Niphal and Hiphil. 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 H4743 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 →
- 7
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 7 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 7 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 7 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 5 verses · 71%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 1 verse · 14%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 14%
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: Shall consume away 3×
- American Standard Version: Shall consume away 3×
- Berean Standard Bible: Will rot 3×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Will rot 2×, Will rot away 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4743 across 10 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.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4743 across 10 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.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4743 across 10 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 H4743 across 11 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.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
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 5 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.
Niphal
- 1. fester, of wounds
- 2. rot, rot away
- 3. moulder away
- 4. of pining away by reason of, as punishment for, iniquity
Hiphil
- . a causing his flesh to rot
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
[ מָקַק ] vb. decay, rot, fester, fig. pine away
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
מָקַק
- to soften.
- , נִימּ׳ to be softened; to decay; to be sqashed beyond recognition. Nidd. X, 4 עד שיִמּוֹק הבשר until decay has set in. Bicc. I, 8 נִמַּקּוּ if the first fruits became decayed. Sifra B’ḥuck., Par. 2, ch. VIII (ref. to Lev. XXVI, 39) אינו אומר יִמַּקּוּ אלא יִמַּסּוּ it does not merely mean ‘they shall decay’ (when a portion remains sound), but ‘they shall dissolve’ (v. Macc. 24ᵃ bot.). Nidd. III, 4 נִימּוֹק הולד וכ׳ the embryo may have been mashed (mixed up with the blood) before it was passed. Y. ib. III, end, 51ᵃ נִימּוֹקָּה שלייתו וכ׳ the placenta was mashed. Bab. ib. 27ᵃ אינו דומה נמוק פעם וכ׳ there is no comparison between one presumption that the embryo was mashed and two such suppositions (that the placenta of one embryo and the embryo of another placenta were mashed). R. Hash. III, 8 היו נִימּוֹקִּים they decayed (from the serpent’s bites), opp. מתרפאין; a. e.—Tanḥ. Noah 10 נמק יסודו; Yalk. Dan. 1060 נימק סידו, v. infra. e.g. Leviticus 26:39
- 1. to squash. Y. Ab. Zar. II, 40ᶜ bot. שלא תָמֵיק וכ׳ lest she may squash the embryo in her womb.
- 2. to enervate, cause consumption. Keth. VII, 10 מְמַקְּתוֹ she (the intercourse with her) will enervate him (the leper).
- to be crumbled, to dissolve. Snh. 92ᵇ ה׳ סורו (Rashi) his (Nebucadnezzar’s) pride was crumbled (he confessed his wrong), v. מָרַק; (ed. ה׳ סודו its (the kiln’s) foundation was crumbled (from the heat); [oth. vers. ה׳ סידו the lime in it melted; Tanḥ. Noah 10 נמק יסודו; Yalk. Dan. 1060 נימק סידו].
- to be crushed, to pine. Taan. 25ᵇ עד שיִתְמַקְמֵק ויצטער until he is made submissive (by starvation) and feels pain.
מֶקֶק
- , v. מִמְקָק
מְקָק
- (preced.) מ׳ דסיפרי book-worm. Sabb. 90ᵃ
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 H4743 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| הָמֵ֣ק | Verb, Hiphil, Infinitive Absolute | Zechariah 14:12 | 1 |
| וְ/נָמַ֖קּוּ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Ezekiel 4:17 | 1 |
| וְ/נָמַ֨קּוּ֙ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Isaiah 34:4 | 1 |
| וּ/נְמַקֹּתֶם֙ | Verb, Niphal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural | Ezekiel 24:23 | 1 |
| יִמַּ֨קּוּ֙ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Leviticus 26:39 | 1 |
| יִמָּֽקּוּ | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Leviticus 26:39 | 1 |
| נְמַקִּ֖ים | Verb, Niphal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Ezekiel 33:10 | 1 |
| נָ֭מַקּוּ | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Psalms 38:5 | 1 |
| תִּמַּ֣קְנָה | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Plural | Zechariah 14:12 | 1 |
| תִּמַּ֥ק | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Zechariah 14:12 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4743, 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.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 7 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 7 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.
