מְשַׁח
oil
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.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4887 appears — 2 distinct verses 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.
Ezra 2 verses
- Ezra 6:9 וּ/מְשַׁ֗ח conj + n c ms That which they have need of, both young bulls, and rams, and lambs, for burnt offerings to the God of heaven; [also] wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the word of the priests who are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail;
- Ezra 7:22 מְשַׁ֖ח n c ms to one hundred talents of silver, and to one hundred measures of wheat, and to one hundred baths of wine, and to one hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.
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, משח (mᵉshach) means “oil.” With only 2 verses it sits in the long tail of Hebrew Bible vocabulary. Its uses cluster heavily in Ezra (100% of all occurrences). First canonically at Ezra 6:9, it enters the text early. From the same root come משח, ממשח and משחה. 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 H4887 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 →
- 2
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 2 distinct verses.
- 1 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 1 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #4,807
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 4,807 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 2 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Ezra 2 verses 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 2 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 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).
- King James Version: Oil 2×
- American Standard Version: Oil 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Oil 1×, Olive oil 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Oil 1×, Or oil 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4887 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4887 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4887 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4887 across 2 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Senses in BDB
The 1 sense BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- oil
Word origin
Derived from משח (mâshach) (H4886) — to anoint.
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.
מָשַׁח I
- (b. h.) to stroke, smear; esp. to anoint; to install in office by anointing. Ker. 5ᵇ מושְׁחִין את המלכים כמין נזר וכ׳ in anointing kings you draw the figure of a crown with the oil on your finger &c., v. כי. Ib. אין מושחין מלך וכ׳ a king succeeding his father is not anointed; a. v. fr.—Part. pass. מָשׁוּחַ, pl. מְשׁוּחִים, מְשׁוּחִין. כהן מ׳ a high priest installed with the ceremony of anointing, contrad. to מרובה בגדים, v. מְרוּבֶּה. Hor. III, 4; Meg. I, 9 אין כין כהן מ׳ בשמן וכ׳ there is no difference between the anointed and the unanointed high priest except &c. Sifré Tsav, Par. 3, ch. V; a. fr., v. מָשִׁיחַ.—מְשׁוּחַ מלחמה the priest anointed as the chaplain of the army. Yoma 72ᵇ; a. fr., v. מָשִׁיחַ.—Pesik. R. s. 8 מ׳ מלחמה, v. מָשִׁיחַ end. Hor. 12ᵃ, v. יָמַן. Ib. 11ᵇ מלכי בית דוד מ׳ וכ׳ the kings of the house of David are anointed kings, those of Israel are not installed by anointment; a. fr.
- to be anointed. Ib. יהוא לא נ׳ וכ׳ Jehu would not have been anointed but for the contest of Joram’s followers. Ib. וממנו היה נִמְשָׁח המשכן וכ׳ with that oil (prepared by Moses) were anointed the Tabernacle &c.; Y. Sot. VIII, 22ᶜ. Num. R. s. 12 עד שנִמְשְׁחוּ כולם until all the vessels were anointed; a. fr.
מְשַׁח
- Targ. O. Gen. XXXI, 13. Targ. Ps. LXIV, 4 (Ms. מתח); a. fr.—Part. pass. מְשִׁיחַ. Targ. II Sam. I, 21; a. e.—Ker. 5ᵇ ההוא דמשיח וכ׳ (not דמשח) that son of the high priest that was anointed was high priest &c.; Hor. 11ᵇ אי הוה משיח וכ׳.
- to be rubbed with oil, perfumed. Targ. Am. VI, 6.
מָשַׁח II
- to stretch, measure. Denom. מָשׁוֹחַ, מְשִׁיחָה.
- to draw the outlines. Yalk. Num. 719 עומד ומַמְשִׁיחַ בה stood there drawing (the pattern of the candlestick).
מְשַׁח ²
- Targ. Y. Gen. X, 25. Targ. Ez. XL, 5; a. fr.—Sabb. 19ᵃ נִימְשַׁח וניתיב ליה נימשח ונשקול מיניה Ms. M. (ed., v. מִשְׁחָא II) let him measure when giving it out and again when receiving it back. B. Mets. 107ᵇ לא תִימְשְׁחִינְהוּ כלל Ms. M. (ed. תימשחנו) do not measure (survey) at all.
מְשַׁח III
- (מְשַׁח I)
- 1. oil, fat. Targ. Num. VII, 13. Targ. Ex. XXIX, 7; a. fr.—Y. Maas. Sh. IV, 54ᵈ bot. הוה ליה משח וכ׳ had oil which he took down to Acco (for sale). Ib. ההוא מִישְׁחָךְ וכ׳ (not מישחף, some ed. מישחא) that oil of thine at Beth M.—Ab. Zar. 37ᵃ דשרו מ׳ who permitted oil (of gentiles). Ib. 28ᵃ מ׳ דאווזא goose-fat; a. fr.
- 2. resin. Targ. Is. XLI, 19 אעין דמ׳ pine-wood (h. text עצי שמן, v. דדנין).—Succ. 40ᵃ, v. מִשְׁחָן. Gitt. 69ᵇ, v. כּוּפְרָא II.
מְשַׁח IV
- (מְשַׁח II) measure, length. Targ. II Chr. IV, 2 חוט מ׳ measuring line; a. e.—[Targ. I Kings VI, 25 משחא חדא, v. מִשְׁחֲתָא.]—B. Bath. 145ᵇ עתיר משח rich in things that are measured (corn &c.).—Sabb. 19ᵃ במ׳ ניתיב וכ׳ let him give it out (for washing) by measure &c., v. מְשַׁח II.—V. מִשְׁחֲתָא.
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 2 distinct written forms H4887 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וּ/מְשַׁ֗ח | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezra 6:9 | 1 |
| מְשַׁ֖ח | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Ezra 7:22 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4887, 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
Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 5 — not the complete family. They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 2 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 2 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.
