מַשְׁקֶה
drink
‘drink’ 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 Absolute-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
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.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
8 verses where H4945 appears in the Absolute state in the Book of Genesis. 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.
Genesis
- Genesis 13:10 מַשְׁקֶ֑ה n c ms Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw all the plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before Yahweh destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of Yahweh, like the land of Egypt, as you go to Zoar.
- Genesis 40:2 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֔ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker.
- Genesis 40:5 הַ/מַּשְׁקֶ֣ה ptcl def.art + n c ms They both dreamed a dream, each man his dream, in one night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were bound in the prison.
- Genesis 40:9 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֛ים ptcl def.art + n c mp The chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, "In my dream, behold, a vine was in front of me,
- Genesis 40:20 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֗ים ptcl def.art + n c mp It happened the third day, which was Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants, and he lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.
- Genesis 40:21 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֖ים מַשְׁקֵ֑/הוּ ptcl def.art + n c mp n c ms cs + sfx pers 3ms He restored the chief cupbearer to his position again, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand;
- Genesis 40:23 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֛ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Yet the chief cupbearer didn't remember Joseph, but forgot him.
- Genesis 41:9 הַ/מַּשְׁקִ֔ים ptcl def.art + n c mp Then the chief cupbearer spoke to Pharaoh, saying, "I remember my faults today.
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.
משקה (mashqeh) is a Hebrew noun most often rendered “drink.” It clusters heavily in Genesis, which alone accounts for 56% of its uses. With 18 verses in 7 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. It first appears in Genesis 13:10. Not a single-sense word: explore its full sense range. The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4945 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 →
- 18
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 18 distinct verses.
- 7 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 7 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,563
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,563 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 18 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Genesis 10 verses 56%
- 1 Kings 2 verses 11%
- 2 Chronicles 2 verses 11%
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 18 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 11 verses · 61%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 4 verses · 22%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 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†: All drink 1×, All the drinking 1×, Butlership 1×
- American Standard Version†: 's drinking 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Cupbearer 10×, Cupbearers 2×, Drinking 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Cupbearers 8×, Cupbearer 2×, Drink 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4945 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4945 across 7† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 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 H4945 across 18† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4945 across 20† 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
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 3 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.
משקה I butler, cup-bearer (proposes Pt. Hiph. = one giving drink)
משקה II
- 1. irrigation Gn 13:10 (J; abstr. for concrete, =) well-irrigated, of land; Ez 45:15 (מִשְׁפְּחוֹת; Gr מִקְנֵה). e.g. Genesis 13:10
- 2. drink Is 32:6; Lv 11:34; כְּלֵי מ׳ drinking-vessels 1 K 10:21 = 2 Ch 9:20. e.g. Isaiah 32:6
- 3. = office of butler, butlership Gn 40:21 (E). e.g. Genesis 40:21
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.m. butler, cup-bearer (proposes Pt. Hiph. = one giving drink);—abs. מ׳ Gn 40:5 (E), Ne 1:11, cstr. מַשְׁקֵה Gn 40:1, sf. מַשְׁקֵ֫הוּ v 13, pl. מַשְׁקִים v 2, 9, 20, 21, 23; 41:9 (all E); sf. מַשְׁקָיו 1 K 10:5 = 2 Ch 9:4 (> ii. מ׳).
III. n.m. Lv 11:34 irrigation, drink;—abs. מ׳ Gn 13:10 Lv 11:34, cstr. מַשְׁקֵה 1 K 10:21 + 3 times; sf. מַשְׁקֵ֫הוּ Gn 40:21;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שקה (shâqâh) (H8248) — to water.
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.
מַשְׁקֶה
- drink, liquid. Sifra Sh’mini ch. IX, Par. 8 מ׳ זה היין ‘drink’ (Lev. XI, 34) means wine. Ib. מ׳ סרוח spoiled liquid; Pes. 18ᵃ; a. fr.—Pl. מַשְׁקִים, מַשְׁקִין. Ib. 17ᵇ מ׳ הבאין מחמת ידים liquids which have become unclean through contact with unclean hands. Ib. שנטמאו מחמת מ׳ vessels which have become unclean through the liquids put into them; a. fr.—מַשְׁקֵי בית מטבחיא, v. מַטְבָּחַיָּיא a. מַדְבָּחַיָּיא. e.g. Leviticus 11:34
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 16 distinct written forms H4945 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4945, 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 17 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 18 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.
