מָשַׁשׁ
to grope
‘to grope’ is one of 4 main senses 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
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘perhaps my father will feel me’
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- 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”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H4959 appears in the Book of Job — 2 distinct verses. 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.
Job
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.
משש — transliterated mâshash — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to grope.” More than half of its appearances fall in Genesis. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 8 verses — uncommon. It first appears in Genesis 27:12. The verb spans 3 stems, from Qal to Piel. See the sense tree, 8-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4959 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 6 verses · 75%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 2 verses · 25%
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: Grope 1×, Gropeth 1×, He felt 1×
- American Standard Version: Grope 1×, Gropeth 1×, He felt 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Grope 1×, Grope about 1×, Palpable 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 2×, They grope 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4959 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4959 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4959 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4959 across 12 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.
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.
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.
Qal
- perhaps my father will feel me; and he felt of him
Piel
- . feel over or through, grope
Hiphil
- . that one may feel (the) darkness
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
[ מָשַׁשׁ ] vb. feel, grope
— 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.
מָשַׁשׁ
- v. מוּשׁ) to feel, grope, search. —Palp. מִשְׁמֵשׁ q. v.
מְשַׁשׁ I
- Pa. מַשֵּׁישׁ same. Targ. O. Gen. XXXI, 34; 37 (Y. פשפש).
מְשַׁשׁ II
- (preced.) substance, essence; reality. Targ. Lam. II, 14. Targ. Job XV, 3; a. e.—Ab. Zar. 55ᵃ דע"ז לית בה מ׳ that there is no reality in idols. Pes. 4ᵇ אטו אמירה דהני מידי מ׳ אית ביה has their declaration any significance?—Yeb. 102ᵇ, v. חֲלַץ. Sabb. 152ᵇ bot., v. מַמָּשָׁא; Yalk. Gen. 33 מַשָּׁשָׁה.
שֵׁשׁ I
- (b. h.) marble, v. שַׁיִשׁ.
שֵׁשׁ II
- (b. h.) white linen. Yoma 71ᵇ דברים שנאמר בהן שש … ששה וכ׳ those things concerning which shesh is used are woven of a sixfold thread, where moshzar is added, of an eightfold thread. Ib. מאי משמע דהאי שש כיתנא הוא what evidence is there that that shesh (Ex. XXXIX, 27) means flax? Y. Kil. IX, beg. 31ᵈ (ref. to Ex. XXXIX, 28; 29, a. Ez. XLIV, 18) את דרש שש משש שש מפארי ופארי מפארי you learn the meaning of shesh (in האבנט שש משזר) from shesh (in פארי מגבעות שש), and the meaning of this shesh from פארי (in ופארי פשתים Ez. l. c.), and the meaning of this paăré from paăré (in פארי מגבעות, Ex. l. c.). Midr. Prov. to ch. XXXI, 22 זו … שהיה מרוקם בשש וארגמן that is Bathsheba of whom came Solomon who was clad in embroidered garments of white linen and purple; Yalk. ib. 964. Cant. R. to IV, 12 (ref. to Ez. XVI, 10) תחת שש ועזים as a reward for the offering of white linen and goats’ hair (Ex. XXV, 4); a. e. e.g. Exodus 39:27
שֵׁשׁ
- six. Pes. V, 1 (58ᵃ) בששה ומחצה (Y. a. Bab. ed. בשש) at six hours and a half (from sunrise). Y. ib. IV, beg. 30ᶜ משש שעות ולמעלן after six hours (noon); משש שעות ולמען before noon. Yoma 21ᵇ שש אשות הן there are six kinds of fire. Pes. 49ᵇ ש׳ דברים נאמרו וכ׳ six things have been said concerning ignorant people; a. v. fr.—Constr. m. שֵׁשֶׁת. Snh. 97ᵃ; Ab. Zar. 9ᵃ; v. שָׁנָה II; a. fr.—Pl. שִׁשִּׁים sixty. B. Kam. 58ᵇ סאה בש׳ סאין the damage to a field of one S’ah is assessed by calculation from a field of sixty S’ahs (so as to arrive at a fair estimate). Ib. בש׳ taking as a basis for calculation sixty times the quantity under dispute; ib. 59ᵃ; a. e.—Ḥull. 97ᵇ בש׳ (sub. בטל) is neutralized in a quantity sixty times as large. Ex. R. s. 1 ש׳ בכרס אחד sixty at one birth. Y. Taan. IV, 68ᶜ top ש׳ רבוא sixty myriads. Succ. 51ᵇ; 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 9 distinct written forms H4959 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| וְ/יָמֵ֖שׁ | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Exodus 10:21 | 1 |
| וַ/יְמַשֵּׁ֥שׁ | Verb, Piel, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 31:34 | 1 |
| וַ/יְמֻשֵּׁ֑/הוּ | Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 27:22 | 1 |
| יְֽמַשְׁשׁ֥וּ | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 5:14 | 1 |
| יְמַֽשְׁשׁוּ | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Job 12:25 | 1 |
| יְמַשֵּׁ֤שׁ | Verb, Piel, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Deuteronomy 28:29 | 1 |
| יְמֻשֵּׁ֨/נִי֙ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 27:12 | 1 |
| מְמַשֵּׁ֣שׁ | Verb, Piel, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 28:29 | 1 |
| מִשַּׁ֣שְׁתָּ | Verb, Piel, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Genesis 31:37 | 1 |
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
