StrongerBible

me'od

מְאֹד

HebrewH3966“very, exceedingly, ...”

Appears 300 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 1:31Gen 4:5Gen 7:18Gen 7:19 (2×)Gen 12:14Gen 13:2Gen 13:13Gen 15:1Gen 17:2 (2×)Gen 17:6 (2×)Gen 17:20 (2×)Exo 1:7Deu 6:52Ki 23:252Ch 16:14Psa 104:1Ezk 9:9Ezk 16:13
Root family
Word studyResearch-grademeh-OHDadjective

What me'od means

muchness pushed to the limit: the quality of being abundant or forceful, used almost always to mean very or exceedingly

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its root מְאֹד names sheer quantity or force, the property of being a great deal of something. Hebrew puts that idea to work almost entirely as an intensifier: tacked onto a describing word or an action, it pushes the statement to its limit, so good becomes very good, heavy becomes extremely heavy, multiplied becomes multiplied beyond measure. This is the word's everyday job in roughly nine of every ten uses.

The more emphatic shades grow out of that same core. When the word is doubled, or stacked on a small word for in, it is the strongest dial Hebrew has for piling on degree: not merely very, but utterly, overwhelmingly so. The covenant blessings to Abraham and the swarming growth of Israel in Egypt use this stacked form to say the increase was past all reckoning.

Twice the word steps out as a thing in its own right rather than a degree word. In the command to love God with all your heart, life, and מְאֹד, and in the matching praise of King Josiah, it names the whole of a person's capacity: physical strength, will, and even property and possessions, the total much-ness one has to give. The breadth of that one word is exactly why translators and ancient interpreters reached for so many different terms for it.

Nuances

1avery, exceedingly, greatly: intensifying a describing word or an action to a high degree
Gen 1:31Gen 4:5Gen 7:18Gen 12:14Gen 13:2Gen 13:13Gen 15:1Gen 18:20Gen 19:3Gen 19:9Gen 20:8Gen 21:11
1butterly, overwhelmingly, beyond measure: the heightened form, when the word is doubled or stacked with in, dialing degree to its absolute top
Gen 7:19 (2×)Gen 17:2 (2×)Gen 17:6 (2×)Gen 17:20 (2×)Gen 30:43Exo 1:7Num 14:71Ki 7:472Ki 10:4Ezk 9:9Ezk 16:13Ezk 37:10
1cthe whole of one's capacity: strength, will, and resources together, the total much-ness a person has to offer
Deu 6:52Ki 23:25
Deu 6:5

How to take the substantival מאד (your מאד) in the third clause of the Shema, love God with all your heart, life, and מאד.

  • contestedStrength or capacity: personal vigor, power, or capacity (the might tradition).; S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC, 1895), on 6:5; Septuagint (Old Greek), dynamis; cf. J. W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy (SBLSCS 39, 1995), pp. 115-116
  • contestedProperty or possessions: one's wealth or material resources.; Targum Onkelos (Sperber, The Bible in Aramaic, Brill 1959), nikhsakh (your property); Mishnah Berakhot 9:5, be-khol mamonkha (with all your money)
  • contestedDeliberately inclusive totality: the whole range of capacities (physical, mental, material) by which one loves God, refusing to narrow.; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (Anchor Bible 5, 1991), pp. 339, 351-352; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), p. 77; S. Dean McBride, The Yoke of the Kingdom, Interpretation 27 (1973): 273-306

What scholars say about me'od

The major lexica treat מאד as one word: a substantive meaning muchness, abundance, or force whose overwhelmingly dominant biblical use is adverbial intensification (very, exceedingly). BDB lemmatizes it as a noun (muchness, force, abundance) with the adverbial use as a grammaticalized accusative of degree; HALOT, Gesenius (18th ed.), and TDOT preserve the nominal core; DCH (following James Barr) and TLOT (Jenni) decline to derive the adverbial use from a single core meaning and instead catalogue the syntactic patterns. The comparative Semitic evidence (Akkadian mada, Ugaritic mid, both from the root for being many) confirms an original meaning of muchness or abundance, not force; the might reading at Deuteronomy 6:5 and 2 Kings 23:25 is a Hebrew-internal narrowing toward personal capacity. The reference grammars (GKC, Joujon-Muraoka, Waltke-O'Connor) treat it as the canonical noun used adverbially as an accusative of degree, and Muraoka's study of emphatic structures places the doubled forms among intensifying repetitions that produce a superlative. The substantival use at Deuteronomy 6:5, the most contested instance, has generated a wide reception (strength, capacity, mind, wealth, property, every measure), which modern Deuteronomy scholarship (Driver, Weinfeld, Tigay, Otto, McBride) and the rabbinic tradition alike read as a deliberate refusal to narrow.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown, Driver, Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, p. 547, s.v. מְאֹדlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner, English ed. Richardson 1994-2000), s.v. מְאֹדlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch, 18th ed. (Meyer and Donner, 1987-2010), s.v. מְאֹדlexicon
  • DCH (D. J. A. Clines, ed.), Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. V (2001), s.v. מְאֹדlexicon
  • E. Jenni, מְאֹד, in TLOT (Jenni-Westermann, THAT I, 1971)theological-dictionary
  • TDOT (Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament), vol. VIII, s.v. מְאֹדtheological-dictionary
  • T. Muraoka, Emphatic Words and Structures in Biblical Hebrew (Magnes/Brill, 1985)monograph
  • B. K. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, sec. 39.3.1 (Eisenbrauns, 1990)grammar
  • Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (Anchor Bible 5, 1991), pp. 339, 351-352commentary
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), p. 77commentary
  • S. R. Driver, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy (ICC, 1895), on 6:5commentary
  • Leonid Kogan, Genealogical Classification of Semitic (De Gruyter, 2015), on the root m-'-d as an Akkadian-Northwest Semitic isoglossmonograph

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of מְאֹד

m s absolute

מְאֹד, מְּאֹד

Gen 1:31, Gen 4:5, Gen 7:18, Gen 7:19, Gen 7:19, Gen 12:14, Gen 13:2, Gen 13:13

conj

מְאֹד

Gen 17:2, Gen 17:6, Gen 17:20, Exo 1:7, 2Ch 16:14, Ezk 9:9, Ezk 16:13

m s construct

מְאֹדֶךָ

Deu 6:5

m s construct

מְאֹדוֹ

2Ki 23:25