מָתַי
how long
‘how long’ is one of 2 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
- Particle
- A short function word — article, negation, interrogative, the sign of the direct object, and the like.
Every verse where H4970 appears in the Book of Genesis — 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.
Genesis
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 word מתי centers on the idea of “how long.” First canonically at Genesis 30:30, it enters the text early. The Hebrew Bible uses it across 40 verses — moderately common. Psalms dominates its distribution — 12 of 40 verses. Its meaning spans more than one sense — see its full sense range. Dig into 40-verse concordance and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H4970 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 →
- 40
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 40 distinct verses.
- 17 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 17 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #837
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 837 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 40 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 40 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 19 verses · 48%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 16 verses · 40%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 13%
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: How long 1×, Now when 1×, Over me when 1×
- American Standard Version: How long 1×, Now when 1×, Over me 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: When 13×, Long 3×, How long 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: When 35×, How long 2×, Will 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H4970 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H4970 across 3 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H4970 across 20 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 23 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H4970 across 42 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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.
- a. alone, †Gn 30:30 מָתַי אעשׂה גם אנכי לביתי when shall I also do, etc.? Am 8:5 ψ 41:6; 42:3; 94:8; 101:2; 119:82, 84 Pr 6:9b; 23:35 Jb 7:4 מָתַי אָקוּם, Ne 2:6. e.g. Genesis 30:30
- b. לְמָתַי against when? †Ex 8:5 לְמָתַי אַעְתִּיר לְךָ. e.g. Exodus 8:5
- c. עַד־מָתַי until when? how long? sq. impf. Ex 10:7 עד מתי יהיה זה לנו למוקשׁ, 1 S 1:14 Je 4:14, 21 ψ 74:10; 82:2; 94:3 Pr 1:22 +, sq. ptcp. 1 S 16:1 1 K 18:21 עַד־מָתַי אַתֶּם פֹּסְחִים עַל־שְׁתֵּי הַסְּעִפִּים, sq. pf. †Ex 10:3 ψ 80:5; עַד מָתַי לֹא †2 S 2:26 Ho 8:5 Zc 1:12; alone, Is 6:11 וָאֹמַר עַד־מָתַי אֲדֹנָי, Hb 2:6 הוֹי הַמַּרְבֶּה לֹא־לוֹ עַד־מָתַי; with an aposiop., ψ 6:4 וְאַתָּה י׳ עַד־מָתָ֑י, 90:13. b. אַחֲרֵי מָתַי עוֹד after how long yet? †Je 13:27. e.g. Exodus 10:7
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
interrog.adv. when? (Arabic مَتَى Assyrian mati: in NH and Aramaic with the interrog. אַי, אֵימָתִי, אֵימָת, ܐܶܡܰܬܝ ), in OT only of future time:
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: from an unused root meaning to extend
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.
מַתַּי
- pr. n. m., v. מַתַּאי
מַתִּי
- , v. מוּת
מָתַי
- (b. h.) when? Ber. I, 1 מִמָּ׳ Ar. (ed. מאֵימָתַי). Midr. Till. to Ps. IV, 3; 5 עד מ׳ וכ׳ how long will you &c.? Succ. 56ᵇ; 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 15 distinct written forms H4970 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| מָתַ֖י | Particle, Interrogative | Daniel 12:6 | 8 |
| מָתַ֥י | Particle, Interrogative | Proverbs 23:35 | 7 |
| מָתַי֙ | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 10:7 | 5 |
| מָתַ֣י | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 10:3 | 4 |
| מָתַ֗י | Particle, Interrogative | Jeremiah 23:26 | 3 |
| מָתַ֛י | Particle, Interrogative | Genesis 30:30 | 3 |
| מָתַ֞י | Particle, Interrogative | Amos 8:5 | 3 |
| מָ֝תַ֗י | Particle, Interrogative | Proverbs 6:9 | 2 |
| מָתַ֕י | Particle, Interrogative | Habakkuk 2:6 | 2 |
| וּ/מָתַ֣י | Particle, Interrogative | Nehemiah 2:6 | 1 |
| לְ/מָתַ֣י | Particle, Interrogative | Exodus 8:9 | 1 |
| מָ֭תַי | Particle, Interrogative | Psalms 101:2 | 1 |
| מָתַ֬י | Particle, Interrogative | Psalms 119:84 | 1 |
| מָתָ֑י | Particle, Interrogative | Psalms 90:13 | 1 |
| מָתָֽי | Particle, Interrogative | Psalms 6:3 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H4970, 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 37 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 40 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
- Genesis 30:30
- Exodus 8:9
- Numbers 14:27
- 1 Samuel 1:14
- 2 Samuel 2:26
- 1 Kings 18:21
- Job 7:4
- Psalms 6:3
- Proverbs 1:22
- Isaiah 6:11
- Jeremiah 4:14
- Daniel 8:13
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.
