Grow With Me
Grow With Me

מַכָּה

maka · blow, wound, plague

Hebrew word · Strong’s number H4347 · appears 48 times in the Bible

What is the Strong number?Strong’s number identifies this word: use it to find the same word in other study tools.

What it means

maka (מַכָּה) is a Hebrew word of the Bible that means “blow, wound, plague”.

A blow; also the wound or the plague that it leaves.

How to say it

ma·ka

Approximate pronunciation. Vowels sound as in Spanish (a as in father, e as in bed, i as in machine, o as in note, u as in rule); the syllable in bold is stressed. The voice is your device's.

Its senses in the Bible

  1. The harm a blow leaves: a wound or a sore on the body.
  2. A great defeat an army suffers, or the plague YHWH sends on a people.

From Brown-Driver-Briggs (1906)

Word study

Blow: the act of striking and what it leaves, the wound or the sore; also the blow YHWH gives with a defeat or a disease. It comes from the verb נָכָה, ‘strike’ (H5221).

Historical and cultural background

The law set a limit to punishment: “Forty {blows} he may strike him, not more”, so that the brother would not be degraded (Deuteronomy 25:3).

How we translate it

“Blow” 21 times and “blows” 8, also in the penalty of the forty blows, without saying ‘flog’ (Deuteronomy 25:3), and in the diseases of Deuteronomy 28:59 (“your blows”). When it is what remains in the body or in a city, “wound” (7) or “wounds” (10), above all in Jeremiah.

How it is translated

The words this translation uses for it, most frequent first.

  • blow ×21
  • wounds ×10
  • blows ×8
  • wound ×7
  • crushed ×1
  • lashes ×1

Where it appears

  • Leviticus 26:21

    And if you walk with me in opposition and are not willing to listen to me, I will go on to bring on you blows seven times more according to your sins.

  • Numbers 11:33

    The meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, when the anger of YHWH burned against the people, and YHWH struck the people with a very great blow.

  • Deuteronomy 25:3

    Forty blows he may strike him, not more, lest he go on to strike him with many blows beyond these, and your brother be degraded in your eyes.

  • Deuteronomy 28:59

    then YHWH will make extraordinary your blows and the blows of your offspring, blows great and lasting, and sicknesses severe and lasting.

  • Deuteronomy 28:61

    Also every sickness and every blow that is not written in the book of this instruction, YHWH will bring them up on you until you are destroyed.

  • Deuteronomy 29:22

    And the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, will say, when they see the blows of that land and its sicknesses with which YHWH has made it sick

  • Joshua 10:10

    And YHWH threw them into confusion before Israel, and he struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and pursued them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and as far as Makkedah.

  • Joshua 10:20

    And it came about, when Joshua and the sons of Israel had finished striking them with a very great blow, until they were finished, and the survivors who survived of them had entered into the fortified cities,

  • Judges 11:33

    He struck them from Aroer to the approach of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a very great blow. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel.

  • Judges 15:8

    He struck them leg on thigh, a great blow; and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the crag of Etam.

  • 1 Samuel 4:8

    Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck Egypt with every kind of blow in the wilderness.

  • 1 Samuel 4:10

    So the Philistines fought, and Israel was struck down, and they fled each to his tent; and the blow was very great, and there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers.

  • 1 Samuel 6:19

    And he struck among the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked into the ark of YHWH; he struck among the people seventy men, fifty thousand men. And the people mourned, because YHWH had struck the people with a great blow.

  • 1 Samuel 14:14

    The first blow that Jonathan and the one who carried his weapons struck was about twenty men, within about half a furrow of a yoke of field.

  • 1 Samuel 14:30

    How much more if only the people had eaten freely today from the spoil of their enemies that they found! For now the blow among the Philistines has not been great.”

  • 1 Samuel 19:8

    Again there was war; and David went out and fought against the Philistines and struck them with a great blow, and they fled from before him.

  • 1 Samuel 23:5

    David and his men went to Keilah and fought against the Philistines; he drove away their livestock and struck them with a great blow. So David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.

  • 1 Kings 20:21

    The king of Israel went out and struck the horses and the chariots, and struck Aram with a great blow.

  • 1 Kings 22:35

    The battle rose that day, and the king was propped up in the chariot facing Aram; and he died in the evening, and the blood of the wound poured out into the bottom of the chariot.

  • 2 Kings 8:29

    King Joram returned to be healed in Jezreel from the wounds that the Arameans had inflicted on him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Ahaziah son of Joram, king of Judah, went down to see Joram son of Ahab in Jezreel, for he was sick.

  • 2 Kings 9:15

    but King Joram had returned to be healed in Jezreel from the wounds that the Arameans had inflicted on him when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Jehu said, “If this is your will, let no survivor get out of the city to go and tell it in Jezreel.”

  • 2 Chronicles 2:10

    And look, to the woodcutters, to those who cut the trees, to your servants, I give twenty thousand cors of crushed wheat, twenty thousand cors of barley, twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil.”

  • 2 Chronicles 13:17

    Abijah and his people struck them with a great blow, and there fell slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men.

  • 2 Chronicles 22:6

    He returned to be healed in Jezreel from the wounds that they had inflicted on him at Ramah, when he fought against Hazael king of Aram. And Azariah son of Joram, king of Judah, went down to see Joram son of Ahab in Jezreel, for he was sick.

  • 2 Chronicles 28:5

    YHWH his Elohim gave him into the hand of the king of Aram, and they struck him and took captive from him a great number of captives and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hand of the king of Israel, who struck him with a great blow.

  • Esther 9:5

    And the Jews struck all their enemies with a blow of the sword, and slaughter, and ruin, and they did to those who hated them according to their will.

  • Psalms 64:7

    But Elohim shoots them with an arrow; suddenly their wounds come.

  • Proverbs 20:30

    The wounds of a blow cleanse away evil, and lashes, the inner rooms of the belly.

  • Isaiah 1:6

    From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it: wound and bruise and fresh blow; they have not been pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.

  • Isaiah 10:26

    And YHWH Tsevaot will rouse against him a whip, as the blow on Midian at the rock of Oreb; and his staff will be over the sea, and he will lift it in the manner of Egypt.

  • Isaiah 14:6

    that struck peoples in wrath with blows without ceasing, that ruled the nations in anger with persecution that no one held back.

  • Isaiah 27:7

    Has he struck him like the blow of the one who struck him? Or has he been slain like the slaying of those slain by him?

  • Isaiah 30:26

    And the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, in the day when YHWH binds up the fracture of his people and heals the wound of his blow.

  • Jeremiah 6:7

    As a well pours out its waters, so she pours out her evil; violence and devastation are heard in her; before me continually are sickness and wounds.

  • Jeremiah 10:19

    Woe to me for my breaking! My wound is incurable. But I said: “Surely this is a sickness, and I must bear it.”

  • Jeremiah 14:17

    And you will say to them this word: ‘Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for with a great breaking has been broken the virgin daughter of my people, a wound incurable, very grievous.

  • Jeremiah 15:18

    Why has my pain been perpetual, and my wound beyond remedy, refusing to be healed? Will you really be to me like a deceptive brook, waters that are not faithful?

  • Jeremiah 19:8

    And I will make this city a horror and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss over all its wounds.

  • Jeremiah 30:12

    For thus says YHWH: Beyond remedy is your breaking, incurable your wound.

  • Jeremiah 30:14

    All your lovers have forgotten you; you they do not seek; for with the wound of an enemy I have struck you, with the correction of a cruel one, because of the multitude of your iniquity; your sins have become strong.

And 8 more times.