מְרִיבָה
Meribah
BDB lists 3 entries for ‘Meribah’ 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 H4809 appears in the Book of Deuteronomy — 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.
Deuteronomy
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 name מריבה centers on the idea of “Meribah.” Numbers dominates its distribution — 3 of 6 verses. Spanning 6 verses in 4 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Its earliest occurrence is Exodus 17:7. Dig into 6-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4809 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Numbers 3 verses 50%
- Exodus 1 verse 17%
- Deuteronomy 1 verse 17%
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 6 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 83%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 17%
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 2 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†: Meribah 6×
- American Standard Version†: Meribah 6×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Meribah 7×, Meribath-kadesh 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Meribah 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4809 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 3 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4809 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4809 across 11† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H4809 across 6† tagged occurrences — 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 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.
מריבה I strife, contention
מריבה II loc. (place of strife)
- 1. at Rephidim, מַסָּה וּמ׳ Ex 17:7 (J), Λοιδόρησις. e.g. Exodus 17:7
- 2. at Kadesh, especially in מֵי מְרִיבָה water of M. (𝔊 ὕδωρ ἀντιλογίας) Dt 33:8 Nu 20:13 (P) ψ 81:8; 106:32, also (𝔊 ὕδωρ τῆς λοιδορίας, 𝔊L as above) Nu 20:24 (P); מ׳ cstr. in מֵי מְרִיבַת קָדֵשׁ (𝔊 ὕδωρ ἀντιλογίας [ἐν] Καδης) Nu 27:14 Dt 32:51 (both P), and (𝔊 ὕδωρ βαριμωθ Καδης) Ez 48:28; so מֵי מְרִיבוֹת ק׳ 47:19 (𝔊 ὕδωρ Μαριμωθ Καδης); Dt 33:2 v. קֹדֶשׁ ad fin.; מְרִיבָה alone, only ψ 95:8 (παραπικρασμός; ‖ יוֹם מַסָּה). e.g. Deuteronomy 33:8
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
II. n.f. strife, contention;—abs. מ׳, of quarrel between herdsmen Gn 13:8 (J); cstr. מְרִיבַת הָעִֽדָה, of people’s strife with Moses at Kadesh Nu 27:14 (P), cf. ii. מ׳ 2.
III. n.pr.loc. (place of strife);—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from מריבה (mᵉrîybâh) (H4808) — strife.
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.
מְרִיבָה
- strife. Num. R. s. 3 המטילים מ׳ וכ׳ those who caused strife between him and her. Ib. אף הם היו בעלי מ׳ they, too, were men of strife. Pesik. R. s. 20 מימיכם אנשי מ׳ אתם you have at all times been in the opposition. Ib. אתם עומדים במדינה (corr. acc.) you are of the opposition. Midr. Till. to Ps. CIII עשיתי מ׳ I entered a contest. B. Mets. 59ᵃ; a. fr.
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 5 distinct written forms H4809 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מְרִיבָֽה | Noun, Proper | Deuteronomy 33:8 | 2 |
| וּ/מְרִיבָ֑ה | Noun, Proper | Exodus 17:7 | 1 |
| מְרִיבַ֥ת | Noun, Proper | Numbers 27:14 | 1 |
| מְרִיבָ֔ה | Noun, Proper | Numbers 20:13 | 1 |
| מְרִיבָ֣ה | Noun, Proper | Psalms 81:7 | 1 |
Bible dictionary
Public-domain dictionary articles matched to this entry by name (Meribah). 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
Quarrel or strife. (1.) One of the names given by Moses to the fountain in the desert of Sin, near Rephidim, which issued from the rock in Horeb, which he smote by the divine command, "because of the chiding of the children of Israel" (Ex. 17:1-7). It was also called Massah (q.v.). It was probably in Wady Feiran, near Mount Serbal.
(2.) Another fountain having a similar origin in the desert of Zin, near to Kadesh (Num. 27:14). The two places are mentioned together in Deut. 33:8. Some think the one place is called by the two names (Ps. 81:7). In smiting the rock at this place Moses showed the same impatience as the people (Num. 20:10-12). This took place near the close of the wanderings in the desert (Num. 20:1-24; Deut. 32:51).
Smith's Bible Dictionary · William Smith, 1863
(strife, contention). In (Exodus 17:7) we read, "he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah," where the people murmured and the rock was smitten. [For the situation see Rephidim] The name is also given to Kadesh, (Numbers 20:13,24; 27:14; 32:51) (Meribah-kadesh), because there also the people, when in want of water, strove with God.
Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary · Roswell D. Hitchcock, 1869
dispute; quarrel
Classic public-domain reference works; full attribution on Sources.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 6 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
