מָרָא
Mara
BDB lists 2 entries for ‘Mara’ 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
- Proper
- A name of a specific person, place, or people (e.g. Abraham, Zion, Israel).
Every verse where H4755 appears — 1 distinct verse across 1 book. 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.
Ruth 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, מרא (Mârâʼ) means “Mara.” A scarce word — 1 verse in all of the Hebrew Bible. The word gravitates to Ruth (100%). It occurs only once, in Ruth 1:20. Dig into 1-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4755 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 →
- 1
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 1 distinct verse.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #6,101
- by frequency
- Rank #6,101 (rank 6,101 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 1 occurrence in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ruth 1 verse 100%
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 1 distinct verse.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 100%
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†: Mara 1×
- American Standard Version†: Mara 1×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Mara 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Mara 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4755 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4755 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4755 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4755 across 1† tagged occurrence — most commonly:
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 1 sense 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.
Hiphil
- Impf. 3 fs.: meaning dub., perhaps beat the air, or flap the wings, cf. Di De (and Wetzst in De), Bu Du (cf. Arabic مَرَى whip, urge on a horse?);—תַּמְרִ֑יא תִּשְׂחַק לַסּוּס וּלְרֹכְבֽוֹ׃ Jb 39:18 she (the ostrich) flaps away, she laughs at the horse and his rider. e.g. Job 39:18
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
Ru 1:20, v. i. מַר supr.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מר (mar) (H4751) — bitter.
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.
מָר
- 1. (= מארא, v. אָרָה) hoe, rake. Erub. 77ᵇ דבעי מ׳ וחצינא it requires hoe or pick-axe (to get it out). Meg. 28ᵃ, v. דְּרֵי II. Taan. 23ᵇ top ציבי ומ׳ the wood (he had collected) and the rake. B. Mets. 82ᵇ מ׳ ופסל וקרדום (Ms. מר, Ar. מר פסל) hoe and mattock and axe; Ber. 57ᵇ מר פסל וקרדום. Keth. 64ᵃ בעינא … ומָרָה לקבורה I want a staff to lean on and a hoe to make my grave, i.e. a son to support me in old age and to provide for my burial; Yeb. 65ᵇ. Taan. 21ᵇ, v. זְבִילָא; a. e.—
- *2. (= מארא, denom. of אוּרָא; cmp. Arab. marvu silices &c.) flint for striking a light. Zeb. 116ᵇ אפיקו נורא ממ׳ חדתא (Ms. M. ממַגָּאנָא, Yalk. Lev. 579 ממַגָּנָה, v. מַנְגָּנָא; Ms. K. ממָאנָא; En Yaăk. ממָנָא) produce fire with a flint-stone which has not been used before.
מָרָא
- , to be strong, v. מרי.
מְרָא
- , v. מְרֵי
מֻרָּא
- , v. מוּרָא
מרי I
- (b. h.) to be strong, fat.
- to fatten, stuff. Sabb. XXIV, 3 (155ᵇ) אין מַמְרִים וכ׳ (Y. ed. מַמְרִין; Bab. ed. מאמירין, v. אָמַר II) you must not stuff calves (on the Sabbath), v. הַמְרָאָה I.
מְרֵי
- ; Af. אַמְרֵי to provoke. [Targ. Zech. XII, 10, v. מְרר].—Sot. 35ᵇ top מאן אַמְרִיךְ דאִימַּרְיַית (Ar. ed. Koh. s. v. אמר: אימרייך דאימרת, corr. acc.) who provoked thee that thou didst get angry?; Num. R. s. 5, end.—Gen. R. s. 42 (play on א̇מ̇ר̇פל̇) דא̇מ̇ר̇י וא̇פ̇ל̇י וכ׳ he provoked and made sport of &c.
- 1. to get angry. Num. R. l. c. דאִמַּרְיַת; Sot. l. c., v. supra.
- 2. to quarrel, rebel. B. Mets. 84ᵇ אִימַּרְיָא Ms. M., v. מְרַד.—Ḥull. 58ᵇ אִימְּרָאִי … לבקא Ar., v. בַּקָּא (ed. אִימְּרָא … מב׳ she ran away in anger from &c., v. מְרַד). Keth. 63ᵇ אימראי quot. in Rashi to Job XXXIX, 18 (ed. אימרדה). e.g. Job 39:18
- 3. to refuse to abide by a bargain; to retract. B. Mets. 77ᵃ אייקרא … ואִימְּרוּ פועלים labor became dearer, and the laborers struck. Ib. ואימרי בעה"ב Ar. (ed. ואימר, fr. ימר, v. מוּר I) and the employer refused &c.
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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4755, 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
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 5 — not the complete family. 3 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Mara). A biblical name can be shared by more than one person or place, so an article may treat several.
Easton's Bible Dictionary · M. G. Easton, 1897
Bitter; sad, a symbolical name which Naomi gave to herself because of her misfortunes (Ruth 1:20).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(sad, bitter), the name which Naomi adopted in the exclamation forced from her by the recognition of her fellow citizens at Bethlehem. (Ruth 1:20)
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
Marah, bitter; bitterness
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 1 verse that also exists in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 1 Hebrew verse 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.
