מָרַט
to make bare
‘to make bare’ 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 Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘make bare’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Pual
- The passive counterpart of the Piel.
Form
- Participle Passive
- A verbal adjective expressing action received (“written”).
- 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”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
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”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 3 times (25%)
- Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 2 times (17%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute 1 time (8%)
- Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (8%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 12 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H4803 appears — 11 distinct verses across 6 books. 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.
Leviticus 2 verses
1 Kings 1 verse
Ezra 1 verse
Nehemiah 1 verse
Isaiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 5 verses
- Ezekiel 21:9 מְרוּטָֽה Qal ptcp.pass fs Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus says Yahweh: Say, A sword, a sword, it is sharpened, and also furbished;
- Ezekiel 21:10 מֹרָ֑טָּה Pual pf 3fs it is sharpened that it may make a slaughter; it is furbished that it may be as lightning: shall we then make mirth? the rod of my son, it condemns every tree.
- Ezekiel 21:11 לְ/מָרְטָ֖ה מֹרָ֔טָּה prep + Qal inf.cs Pual pf 3fs It is given to be furbished, that it may be handled: the sword, it is sharpened, yes, it is furbished, to give it into the hand of the killer.
- Ezekiel 21:28 מְרוּטָ֔ה Qal ptcp.pass fs You, son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus says the Lord Yahweh concerning the children of Ammon, and concerning their reproach; and say you, A sword, a sword is drawn, for the slaughter it is furbished, to cause it to devour, that it may be as lightning;
- Ezekiel 29:18 מְרוּטָ֑ה Qal ptcp.pass fs Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyre: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was worn; yet had he no wages, nor his army, from Tyre, for the service that he had served against it.
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.
The Hebrew verb מרט centers on the idea of “to make bare.” Its earliest occurrence is Leviticus 13:40. It appears 11 verses across 6 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. The word gravitates to Ezekiel (45%), then Leviticus and 1 Kings. Across 3 stems, its meaning turns on the binyan (Qal, Niphal). Dig into 11-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4803 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 →
- 11
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 11 distinct verses.
- 6 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 6 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 11 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 11 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 7 verses · 64%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 2 verses · 18%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 18%
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: Plucked off 2×
- American Standard Version: Plucked off 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Polished 4×, Smooth-skinned 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Polished 4×, Is made bare 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4803 across 9 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 H4803 across 9 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 H4803 across 14 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.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4803 across 12 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 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. This entry also uses Pual (the passive of Piel).
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 4 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.
Qal
- 1. make bare
- 2. scour, polish
Niphal
- . his head is made bald
Pual
- . scoured, polished
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
[ מָרַט ] vb. make smooth, bare, bald; scour, polish
— 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.
מָרַט
- (b. h.) to pluck off (hair, wool &c.); to pull. Tosef. Sabb. IX (X), 20; Sabb. 74ᵇ והמוֹרְטוֹ and he who plucks the down off the large feather of the wing. B. Mets. 68ᵇ גוזזות ושוטפות ומוֹרְטוֹת (Ar. גזוזות) they yield wool by being shorn, by passing through water, and by being plucked (in passing bushes &c.; [prob. to be read גזוזות ושטופות ומְרוּטוֹת].
- 1. same. Naz. 39ᵇ תלש מ׳ סיפסף וכ׳ if he pinced his hair (near the root), plucked it off, or trimmed it &c.; (Ar. s. v. ספסף: ‘created a bald spot by using a depilatory’). Sabb. l. c. מְמָרֵט חייב משום ממחק he who plucks the down (v. supra) is guilty of an act coming under the head of scraping (leather).—Part. pass. מְמוֹרָט bald-headed. Naz. 46ᵇ; Yoma 61ᵇ נזיר ממ׳; Tosef. Naz. I, 6 המוֹרָט; Y. ib. VI, end, 55ᵈ נזיר ומירט (read: נזיר ממ׳ or מורט).
- 2. to smooth, polish. Num. R. s. 12 נחשת ממורט (prob. to be read: מְמוֹרֶטֶת) polished bronze.
- to be plucked, to be bald. Sifra Thazr., Par. 5, ch. X נ׳ ראשו וכ׳ if his head became bald through sickness.
מְרַט I
- Targ. O. Lev. XXI, 5. Targ. Jer. XVI, 6; a. e.—Part. מָרֵיט, pl. מָרְטִין. Targ. Is. L, 6 ed. Lag. (oth. ed. מָרְטָן; ed. Wil. מוֹרְטִין).
- to be laid bare, to have the shoulder uncovered (in mourning), v. חָלַץ. Targ. Ez. XXIX, 18 (ed. Wil. אִתְמְרט; h. text מְרוּטָה; Pesh. חליץ).
- , v. infra.
- to pull to pieces, to divide, plunder. Targ. Job XVI, 11 מְמַרְטֵט ed. Lag. (Ms. מרטיט, Var. מְמָרֵט Pa.; h. text ירטני). Targ. Ps. XXXIX, 3 כיבי ממרטיט he lacerates my wound (h. text נעכר).—Ḥull. 92ᵇ ממרטט ליה he pulled the fatty fibres out (going to the root).
- to be torn to pieces, dismembered. Ab. Zar. 69ᵃ אִימַּרְטוּטֵי אִימַּ׳ (the mouse in the liquid) was dismembered. Nidd. 56ᵇ אִמַּרְטוּטֵי אימרטיט it would have been dismembered.—[Koh. R. to X, 16 איתמרטת, read: איתמרעת, v. מְרַע I.]
מְרַט II
- (preced.)
- 1. baldness. Targ. O. Deut. XIV, 1. Targ. Is. XV, 2; a. fr.
- 2. plucked wool, tuft. Sabb. 49ᵃ ממ׳ דביני אטמי of wool plucked from between the flanks (of a living animal, which contains moisture).
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 11 distinct written forms H4803 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| יִמָּרֵ֖ט | Verb, Niphal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Leviticus 13:40 | 2 |
| וָ/אֶמְרְטָ֞/ה | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Ezra 9:3 | 1 |
| וָֽ/אֶמְרְטֵ֑/ם | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Nehemiah 13:25 | 1 |
| לְ/מָרְטָ֖ה | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Ezekiel 21:11 | 1 |
| לְ/מֹֽרְטִ֑ים | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Plural, Absolute | Isaiah 50:6 | 1 |
| מְמֹרָֽט | Verb, Pual, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Kings 7:45 | 1 |
| מְרוּטָ֑ה | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 29:18 | 1 |
| מְרוּטָ֔ה | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 21:28 | 1 |
| מְרוּטָֽה | Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 21:9 | 1 |
| מֹרָ֑טָּה | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Ezekiel 21:10 | 1 |
| מֹרָ֔טָּה | Verb, Pual, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Ezekiel 21:11 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4803, 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 10 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 11 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.
